Jungle Jorge sticks it to ’em!

Story by Lindsay Warner

Jorge Scanzi’s fascination with sticks started as a child in a shop in Buenos Aires. ‘I loved the selection; the smell. It was exotic and I was hooked,’ he says. Subsequently, his passion for the sport grew but he was frustrated with the quality and selection of sticks available: ‘I thought to myself that I’d have to make my own polo sticks and have to make them to each player’s requirements.’

Taught by Zapalla, Villamil and J&M, some of the sport’s master stick makers in Buenos Aires, Scanzi took his skills to Australia, making, repairing and selling custom-made sticks and other polo gear under the banner of Country Polo. He currently stocks the largest selection of sticks in Australia and distributes them to professionals around the world.

‘You’ve got to know what people want; the trends, the personal preferences. For example, Gonzalo Pieres likes a balanced stick to weigh a total of 520 grammes, while Cambiaso and other big hitters often request a 220 grammes head put on their sticks,’ he says.

‘Many players put in an order for a specific weight. Others just trust my selection. You’ve got to know the market, what Argentina demands, what Palm Beach demands. Generally, Argentine players prefer a lighter weight cane than the Americans, the English or Australians, but at the end of the day, a good cane is a good cane.’

That mantra has become the foundation of Scanzi’s business; hand-selecting raw cane for use in his own workshop and to export around the globe. ‘Like everyone else, I used to buy cane in Singapore from the dealers, but got sick of poor quality and thought I could do better by going straight to the sources.’ Enter ‘Jorge from the Jungle’.

For the past five years Scanzi has been tramping the jungles of Indonesia in search of the perfect polo cane. Originally, cane selectors favoured Malaysia, but the jungles there only produce around 200 A-grade canes per year suitable for polo and the world market devours at least 30,000 pieces annually. Out of 10,000 canes grown in the jungle, only 800 are of high enough quality to make into sticks.

However, it takes sixty-five years to grow a good cane and one plant produces only one stick, so it has to be taken by hand out of the jungle. The most important qualities to look for in raw cane are the flex and the weight. If the cane is too whippy, badly marked or unbalanced, it will be left for the furniture makers – they take anything.

Once Scanzi has chosen his canes, they are carried out of the mountains, on foot, to a warehouse in Indonesia where they are cooked in a mixture of boiling water, coconut oil and diesel. Originally, kerosene was used in the cooking process, but it burned too quickly, singeing the cane. As a result, Scanzi substituted diesel which slows the cooking time and results in a whippier and shinier cane favoured by the players.

Upon arrival in Australia, the cooked canes are put into a box oven on high heat to force the humidity from the cut ends. This makes them easier to manipulate and re-shape so they can be straightened: ‘When it is hot, the cane is like rubber and you can make each one straight before turning the end to a 19mm diameter for the handle.’

The cane then goes back into the oven at a lower temperature; 400 degrees for thirty minutes. ‘ It’s like cooking bread – it has to be perfect and you must have a top recipe, because it is easy to ruin a cane at that point,’ explains Scanzi. Providing the cane remains faultless, a handle is attached according to size specifications, the stick is varnished, waterproofed, fitted with a head to balance the shaft and the stick is complete.

‘No-one wants to teach you the real tricks of the trade.’ Scanzi says with a laugh. ‘Everyone develops their own skills and is reluctant to pass them on. Anyone with a few carpentry skills can repair sticks; you just need to splice the cane. Anyone can do that but making them from raw materials is the combination of knowledge from the experts and a lot of trial and error.’

Limited materials mean there is no room for error. Scanzi estimates the jungle he currently uses has around nine or ten years left for harvesting and he discreetly refuses to reveal the location: ‘I would rather keep my exact location classified,’ he says. ‘You’d be surprised, as the demand goes up, everyone wants to find out where I’m getting my cane. But we’re like a family over there and it will remain like that.’

From his most recent harvesting trip, Scanzi estimates he will have enough cane to supply 85 per cent of the stick makers in Argentina and Palm Beach, where stick maker Tato supplies the American polo population, selling nearly 7,000 sticks per year. Scanzi sells around 1,000 annually and his monopoly over process gives him the edge over the competition, many of whom no longer make their own: ‘Too many of the old stick makers have people working for them, like a factory. It’s like making toothpicks – you can just go in there and grab it off the rack, as long as they have a cane.’ The limited supply of the cane begs the question, what’s next for Scanzi and other stick manufacturers? ‘It’s certainly difficult to make plans to expand a stick making business,’ he says. ‘You can’t grow polo cane. They grow over-sized, or take too long. True cane is in the mountains and it’s unique.’

One option is fibreglass. ‘If people will buy the fibreglass mallets, then I’ll sell them,’ he says. ‘But at the moment, I don’t have customers for it. Jean-Paul Clarkin and Greg Keyte both tested the fibreglass, but you’ll notice they’re back to cane as it sends the ball further and doesn’t vibrate your elbow. The weight ratio is different.’

However Scanzi can rely on his Indonesian contacts for now, allowing him to continue his monopoly on raw cane exports and firmly establishing him as ‘Jorge of the Jungle’. ‘Who could believe a one man orchestra could go so far?’ he asks. ‘But I love it and wouldn’t change it for anything in the world.’

It takes sixty-five years to grow a good cane and one plant produces only one stick.