User:JammieMH/Pit Pat

Pit Pat is a cue sport played on 18 x 4 ft. high, 6 ft. long regulation sized "piers". Each pier has a "dent" (hole) in the centre of the pier's "plateau". The object of the game is to sink a 11/12 inch ball into the dent by using a "shtick" (similar to a pool cue) in fewer shots than the opposition: the player who has taken the fewer shtick-goes is victorious.

Pit Pat is a mostly amatuer sport, but around a dozen professionals do exist, earning much of their money from hustling in the Austria-German Pit Pat fields.



History

Pit Pat was invented by long-time lovers John Pitman and Pat Sommerville in their basement conversion in Vienna in 1942. Folklore tells that John was an avid mini-golf fan and Pat a snooker one but neither sport being fashionable in Vienna, saw the two freelance writers compromising to invent a sport tailored to both of their interests.

Their basement soon became too overcrowded with the locals yearning for one too many shtick-goes, so in 1944 John started work on converting their acre of garden into the now reknowned home of Pit Pat: Snolf.

"Snolf", a blend of "snooker" and "golf" got ditched as the sport's name after a legal battle with Frank Snolf, founder of Snolf Sportz, in 1954, but through a legal-loophole the original course's name has been retained.