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Miniature golf is big business for many driving ranges, especially those located in or near densely populated areas. But even ranges in second-tier and tertiary markets can benefit from the built-in entertainment value that drew Americans to play a reported 502.4 million rounds in 2003, as recorded by the Professional Miniature Golf Association LLC in Appleton, Wis. The secret to success in any market is building a course that’s just right—not too small and not too big—for the region. Luckily, there are several types of courses—and companies that design and build them—for range owners to consider.
Prefab-ulous Potential
In season three of NBC’s hit reality show “The Apprentice,” Joe Rogari and Joseph Buckshon heard billionaire and media mogul Donald Trump say those two magic words, “You’re hired.” Co-owners of Jessup, Pa.-based Mini-Golf Inc., Rogari and Buckshon took 54 prefabricated miniature golf holes to New York for a challenge that required the show’s two competing teams to design and build a miniature golf course. And while teams Magna and Net Worth had to navigate the nuances of building a course on their own, Mini-Golf’s real-life customers benefit from the company’s years of experience.
“We try to show our customers how an inexpensive investment can be transformed into the look of an elaborate course at a fraction of the cost,” Rogari says.
The company makes roughly 50 traditional obstacles including windmills, barns, churches, traffic lights and wishing wells, and 40 fiberglass obstacles such as lions, tigers, elephants and dinosaurs that can be used to create a themed course. With rolling hills, undulations, two-tier greens, sand and water hazards and even the ability to change pin placements, the company’s Pro-Putter model tests players’ putting skills to the extent of a permanent cement course. A portable, prefabricated course can be customized using one or a combination of these three types of shots to make the layout as simple or as elaborate as the customer’s imagination. The courses can be used indoors or outdoors, with 18 holes fitting on as little as 3,000 square feet of space, and are easy to set up, move and store in the off-season.
“Everything is completely built and designed here at our manufacturing plant and put together at the customer’s location like a puzzle,” Rogari says.
Four years ago, the Golf Tee in Webster, N.Y., installed a Mini-Golf course in about six hours. Landscaping, including a central garden, enhances the 19-hole layout, which has six traditional obstacles. “It’s done pretty well,” says owner Rick Woodson. “It’s paid for itself and then some.” The price point of the ready-made courses combined with the selection of design options was a plus for Woodson. “From the research we did, you could spend $15,000 to $500,000 on a miniature golf course. We did not want to go into that much debt. Mini-Golf was economical,” he says. And Woodson didn’t have to sacrifice the elements that create interesting play, such as multiple-hole greens. Rogari says some Mini-Golf course owners have even installed waterfalls, streams and ponds.
“We recommend a lot of variety [of shots] and a little landscaping to create a real nice atmosphere,” he says. “It’s a prefab course, but there’s a lot of potential in it.”
The Natural Look
With 40-plus years of experience and more than 400 courses under their belts, the folks at Harris Miniature Golf Courses Inc. know a thing or two about building profitable courses.
The company blends three natural design elements—streams and waterfalls, elevation changes and landscaping—to create dynamic courses that are fun to play. Natural landscaping, the company purports, is universally appealing, especially in non-resort areas where repeat play is essential to the bottom line.
The charge to Harris designers “is to create a course that is interesting to play and that is fun to play so that the course owner will get repeat business,” says Patrick Boylan, vice president of the Wildwood, N.J., company. Interesting play, he points out, is different from challenging play. If the course is too challenging, players will get frustrated, and if it’s too easy, they’ll get bored, Boylan says. But a course that’s just right will bring repeat business.
To draw crowds and keep them coming back, each Harris course incorporates many of the characteristics of a regulation golf course, just on a smaller scale: contour changes that cause the ball to break and turn as it rolls toward the cup, undulations, banking, and greens that bring water, sand traps and rough turf into play.
“Water is a huge thing in a Harris course,” Boylan says. And just like on a real 18-hole course, balls “can and do go in the drink.” Sometimes on purpose. “Some of the holes on our courses come into direct play with the water, which kids absolutely love,” he says.
Opened in 2004, the 18-hole course at Broadway Driving Range and Miniature Golf in Buffalo, N.Y., has three separate water systems, including a 10-foot-tall waterfall that faces the road. There are also two fountains and several ponds connected by a running stream, and this year owner Tom Straus stocked one of the ponds with koi.
“I bought the driving range in 2002 with the almost immediate intention of adding a miniature golf course, which took us two years to plan and finalize,” says Straus.
The 18-hole course has several signature holes, including a 54-foot putt on number 18, a figure eight shot that gives players two hole options and what Straus calls the “ball-in-the-water shot,” where players hit their ball into the water and then meet it downstream on the next green. The course plays around a 75-year-old barn that lends a subtle old-homeplace atmosphere, which is further emphasized by the antique farm equipment and wagon wheels that sit outside the surrounding split-rail fence. Paved concrete pathways connect the greens, and mulch, gravel, bushes and trees keep the course looking natural and not too contrived.
Straus says year-one sales exceeded his expectations, and this summer he’s holding a qualifying tournament for the Harris Cup to attract customers who may not have visited his facility yet. This series of local qualifying tournaments held by Harris course owners culminates in a national championship that last year garnered coverage from the Golf Channel and, since its inception in 2001, has awarded $40,000 in prize money. Straus is banking that with that kind of incentive, he’ll see new customers and even more repeat business at his course.
Larger-Than-Life Themes
Recognizing that overly challenging holes can discourage miniature golf’s key customers—children—Castle Golf Inc. designs courses with a bit of built-in luck.
“This provides children and less skilled players the opportunity to score as well as the parent, and often better,” says Burdette Bremer, director of marketing for the Mesa, Ariz., company. At the same time, hole designs need to take into account the better players, balancing the amount of luck versus skill needed to enjoyably play the course. “Playability issues are vital, especially when you wish to encourage repeat play,” Bremer says. “Hole designs that respect the need for children to have a measure of success and offer logical strategies are intrinsic keys” to a course’s long-term success.
Playability is one of four elements that Castle Golf builds into its courses to maximize owner profits. Maintainability, liability and enjoyability are the other three elements that compose the company’s MAPLE principle. It’s the attention to design details that attract range owners to Castle, but it’s the company’s larger-than-life themes that draw in players.
“Initially, it [a theme] serves to get people’s attention compared to the course down the street or in that nearby town,” says Bremer. But it’s the “memory hook,” he says, that brings them back. “You can probably imagine that the course is more likely to make an impression with a standout theme element that is unique, visually pleasing and maybe even interactive. It’s simply easier to remember and refer to ‘that really neat pirate tree fort’ rather than to remember a generic theme, even though it may have attractive landscaping and water elements.”
It’s indeed hard to forget the three-story tree fort at Paradise Golf in Middleton, Mass. At hole number six on an 18-hole course, the multilevel putting challenge offers players two hole options, one of which carries the ball to the first floor for a chance at a hole in one. Imitation palm trees, multiple water features and a monkey house and outpost complete the “island paradise” theme.
Player demand has been so high since the course opened last year that owner Mark Hourihan has designs on a second miniature golf course. “There are just times people will pull in and leave because there’s a 45-minute wait to get on the course,” he says.
Bremer acknowledges that a themed course does cost more. “However, the cost is incurred one time and produces virtually no additional overhead. The benefits reoccur year after year in the form of additional customers. We also know that each added customer produces revenue for the other elements of the facility as well, so the payoff goes beyond just the miniature golf course,” he says.
When Hourihan bought the driving range four years ago, he says he didn’t think “it was possible to have a facility that had things that the dedicated golfer wanted and also supplied amenities for recreational and family use.”
“When you market something like this properly, people will come here as a destination, and they’re willing to spend some time, so they’ll play miniature golf, hit a bucket of range balls and have an ice cream. There’s more crossover than I had been led to believe would happen,” he says.
The Fun Factor
What’s old is new again at Adventure Golf Services, where President Arne Lundmark is retrofitting past design elements to today’s more modern-styled courses. “We’ve come a little bit full circle from where we used to be,” he says. In the 1950s and 1960s, courses were dominated by “caricature-type themed elements,” where players shot through a windmill or clown’s face. “If there’s budget available, we try to incorporate newer versions of those old props,” usually tied to themes like pirates and shipwrecks or through an added sound effect, he says. “There are a lot of ways to capture the imaginations of players.”
Based in Traverse City, Mich., Adventure Golf Services’ menu of miniature golf products ranges from turnkey custom-designed, themed concrete courses to indoor 3-D black light miniature golf courses to the self-installed modular portable MiniLinks. The company also offers renovation services and last year launched the Miniature Golf Network, a subscription-based web site that offers miniature golf course owners and operators resources for reducing costs, increasing sales and improving their courses.
“To generate revenue, you have to determine what you’re going to build,” says Lundmark. “We try to help the customer decide how much he can afford to build to service a given size market.” He also looks at what elements can be built into the course to make it more fun so that customers return. “Fun is what makes a miniature golf course. If the kids don’t have fun, mom won’t come back.”
Bobbi Roth, director of operations at Fairway Golf Center in Piscataway, N.J., says she’s amazed at the number of young children and teens who frequent the facility’s 18-hole Gold Rush Adventure miniature golf course. “When I was growing up, I never went to a driving range and played mini golf,” she says. “In today’s world, that’s what kids do…and you see the same people over and over again playing mini golf.”
Adventure Golf Services designed the course with a mixture of flat and contoured holes to test players’ putting skills. An overhead channel carries water from the life-size waterwheel at the course’s center to a tower at one end, where it empties into a flowing stream. At one point on the course, customers play through a tunnel, and at another they enter the “coal mine” for a challenging two-tier putt. A wraparound sidewalk—a signature Adventure Golf Services design—eliminates the need for edging by allowing the carpet to be inset into the concrete walkway. The course has been very successful, says Roth.
As with any investment, Lundmark says, there’s the possibility of spending too much money on a course and not getting the expected ROI, or even spending too little when the market could have supported much more. In business since 1975, he’s seen his share of mistakes and tries to prevent customers from making them. “Our forte is custom design and trying to help customers figure out what will sell and what to build,” Lundmark says.
Portable Putting Surface
Celebrating 50 years in business in 2005, Lomma Miniature Golf Co. has sold 4,000-plus miniature golf courses worldwide. The company’s prefabricated courses with pressure-treated wood borders can be themed using 80 different available hazards. There’s also the obstacle-free Pro-Am course, which uses undulations and different colors of carpet to simulate water hazards and sand traps. “The Pro-Am is 60 percent of our sales today because people can actually learn to putt golf,” says Ralph Lomma, president of the Scranton, Pa., company.
Lomma’s courses can be used indoors or outside and can be customized to fit the available space and budget. The company also provides marketing assistance in the form of an operator’s manual. “When they buy one of our courses, we give them the manual and it tells them how to do it from day one—announce the opening, write press releases, even get politicians to do the ribbon cutting,” Lomma says. He also sends out a regular newsletter that shares customers’ tried-and-true promotions for building repeat business.
The prefabricated course is delivered in sections for self-installation, which Lomma says not only saves on labor costs, but also offers a lower-risk opportunity because the course isn’t a permanent fixture. “If you buy a concrete course and it doesn’t work, you have to bulldoze it,” he says. “You can just move our course.”
The Best of Both Worlds
Cost of Wisconsin offers a varied menu of miniature golf course options from on-site constructed adventure-style layouts with custom rockwork, waterfalls and thematic features to the low-cost prefabricated Micro-Golf system.
“One of the things we oftentimes hear is, ‘I really want this type of course with all these features and amenities,’” says Sales Manager Christopher Foster, who works at the company’s Seattle office. “You really have to build [a course] to meet your market, not build it and hope you have a market to support it. That’s why we’re finding a lot of the courses we do are less expensive Micro-Golf systems because, in some cases, the market isn’t large enough to support an adventure course—a $250,000 investment—so they look at lower-cost options to make it a more profitable venture.”
When husband-and-wife range owners Chris and Keria Meals started pricing miniature golf courses two years after opening Royal Green Golf Center in Mifflintown, Pa., they realized a turnkey custom concrete course was beyond their budget and beyond what the market of 23,000 could support. So they looked into the less expensive prefabricated courses and found the Micro-Golf course suited their needs. “We told them [Cost] the dimensions of the area we wanted to build it in and gave them our budget,” says Keria.
Like Cost of Wisconsin’s adventure courses, the Micro-Golf course is custom designed to fit the property and demographics of the destination market. “There are different design philosophies that are used for individual target audiences, but if you stick to a more broad design platform and go with a good mixture of skills holes and trick holes, you can cater to a much broader customer base,” says Foster. A Micro-Golf course can contain all of the fun and challenge of the company’s adventure golf courses, with water, rock features, sand traps drops, jumps, fault-line holes, water holes and multilevel and figure eight holes. “Theming and movable obstacles and cups that can change the course also come into play in creating interesting and challenging play that will encourage repeat business,” says Foster.
Royal Green’s custom-designed 18-hole course has contours and curves that belie the flat landscape of the former cornfield. Several holes have two-hole options for variety, and the Mealses purchased tree trunk and stone props from Cost to cover up holes when they want to change how the course plays. The couple also added a natural Western theme to the course, which sits on about a half-acre.
A nine-hole Micro-Golf course can be installed easily in as little as 2,000 square feet, while an 18-hole layout can use up to 20,000 square feet. Each modular section is composed of a lightweight concrete composite for ease of shipping and installation, and Cost of Wisconsin supplies blueprints, specifications, installation instructions and a video.
Through their own efforts and the use of local resources (the Mealses hired a local contractor to design the concrete walkways and landscaping among the holes), Keria says she and Chris were able to stay within their budget.
Adding a miniature golf course is a “big decision and it’s a substantial investment, so you want to do your research,” says Foster. “Research to determine if it’s a feasible venture and then research to determine the type and style of course that would be profitable for that particular location.”
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