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It’s as American as apple pie. Or at least a Stuckey’s peanut log. Like signs for that once famous roadside delicacy, the idea was to catch your eye and pull your big car off the road into the parking lot for something the whole family could enjoy. Miniature golf and its eclectic collection of windmills and towers, bright lights and exotic designs have long been a symbol of this country’s continuing need to satiate a desperate desire for family fun.
And while some experts say it’s making a big comeback in this nostalgic new age, experts in the industry will tell you that miniature golf never actually went away. It just changed forms, evolved and moved on from one putter-wielding generation to the next.
“Miniature golf just hasn’t changed that much,” says Chris Foster, director of sales and marketing for Cost of Wisconsin Inc., a themed construction leader based in Jackson, Wis. “You look over the years and some of the theming has become a little more sophisticated, and there’s some more technology in the gimmicks, but the game is basically the same.”
And that’s obviously a big part of the appeal of miniature golf, a game whose roots date back to the early 1900s. Nostalgia is in. At least that’s what popular culture experts like nationally syndicated columnist Faith Popcorn are saying.
“We are scrambling for a safe place, and without the comfort of present or future, we are retreating to the past,” she writes. “Didn’t you go to a roller rink and eat KFC when you were a kid? It doesn’t matter; we all share the same icons thanks to decades of media saturation.”
And quite simply, that’s what miniature golf is—an American icon, one that reminds us of our youth and appeals to young and old alike. The game has remained essentially untouched except the design of the playing areas, which have become as diverse as Don Clayton’s straightforward 1950s Putt-Putt Golf franchises to the volcanic, jungle-laden, waterfall-filled oases on display in virtually every American tourist destination these days.
Like winding through one of those elaborate courses to see what tricks and turns the next hole holds, Golf Range Times has rounded up some of the biggest names in the business on all sides of miniature golf and asked, “What’s next?”
A Miniature History
Before you look ahead, it’s always a good idea to first look back. Steven Hix, president of the Miniature Golf Association, U.S., located in Fort Worth, Texas, penned a Brief History of the Nature of Miniature Golf, tracing the game’s roots back to a private course in Pinehurst, N.C., built in 1916. By the ’20s, a putting game played on a hard sand surface was becoming available to a wider audience.
New York City’s first outdoor course opened on a skyscraper rooftop in the financial district in 1926, again using the sand foundation covered with a material made of crushed cottonseed hulls and oil, and then painted green. A resort at Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Tenn., offered the first documented themed course, featuring fairyland-type obstacles, in 1929.
The theme idea was patented and franchised under the name “Tom Thumb Golf,” and quickly spread. More than 3,000 courses opened in 1930, at an average cost of approximately $4,500 per facility.
An estimated 25,000 to 30,000 miniature golf courses—most individually owned and not part of a franchise—were operating in the United States in 1930, with 4 million Americans playing on most comfortable nights.
The game declined before World War II, thanks to residents in many neighborhoods being unhappy with the nighttime commotion of the traffic and noise created by the miniature courses. Government regulations and ordinances slowed further development until after the war when the U.S. economy boomed. A consumer-based mentality took root, and the development of indoor-outdoor carpet gave the game legs.
Clayton founded Putt Putt Golf and Games in 1953, pushing the game as a serious competitive sport, moving away from the themed courses and operating as many as 500 locations at the company’s peak. In 1955, Al Lomma of Scranton, Pa., brought back the happy, hazard-filled concept, with moving windmills and other eye-popping obstacles.
Hix notes a stylistic divergence in miniature golf course architecture from east to west, the West going for more elaborate design while the East, with shorter seasons to play, staying simple with less themed courses.
Amusement parks were at the forefront of miniature golf in the ’70s and ’80s, the courses part of a conglomeration of go-karts and arcades to draw and keep customers on site. The cookie-cutter Putt Putt facilities began to disappear, replaced by courses with more dramatic changes in elevation and a more kid-friendly look that incorporated mountains, bridges and popular storybook themes of pirates, jungles or exotic lands, usually part of a family entertainment center concept.
More recently, the 1990s boom in the golfing industry—partly driven among youngsters by Tiger Woods’ ascension—has necessitated more contoured courses, trying to simulate putting on an actual green.
Green is another important concept. Designers are incorporating elaborate landscaping and the feel of a “natural” setting with plants, rocks and water that has become popular for kids and adults. The more water involved, the better, experts agree.
Hix estimates that there are nearly 7,500 miniature golf course and family entertainment centers nationwide, with construction costs ranging from $1.5 million to more than
$7 million to construct complete centers. To construct the most successful miniature golf courses, Hix estimates owners spend, “a virtual minimum of $25,000 up to over $1 million.”
The New Market
It’s hard to find the once-ubiquitous gigantic clown head with a gaping mouth on a miniature golf course these days. Maybe that’s why so many clowns are crying—having been replaced by waterfalls and immaculate landscaping.
“The big trend for about 10 years now is a move away from the old putt-putt with windmills and a clown’s mouth,” says Peter F. Olesen of Olesen & Associates, an Illinois-based amusement facility consulting and design firm. “It’s more of miniature country club golf now with more consideration into the play rather than themes.”
Olesen points out these new country club-type courses are for “repeat markets,” where players come back often to play, particularly young players influenced—more than most casual observers realize—by Tiger Woods, Anika Sorenstam or Michelle Wie. “Young people are far more aware of golf at a young age than we were,” Olesen says. “You walk around the [miniature] course and you hear them talk about par and bogies and eagles. The grown-ups are saying, ‘Hey, did you see how I banked that shot?’”
Olesen observes that the big money, sometimes around $2 million, is still being spent on courses in tourism areas, where themes and “massive concepts,” he says, are needed to compete within the tourist market of bigger cities.
But the growth areas for the industry, more and more, seem to be secondary markets in smaller cities, where smaller scale miniature courses often are thriving, according to Cost of Wisconsin’s Foster. “There may be a little saturation in some of the larger markets right now, so secondary markets are really starting to pick up,” he says. “Unfortunately they don’t have the population base to justify doing large-scale, adventure-style courses, so they’re opting to do much smaller projects, while still trying to offer amenities to families.”
The pre-fabricated holes and colorful courses are again popular for the smaller ranges, and natural themes, which came into vogue about 15 years ago, are still evident everywhere. Landscaping with scenic gardens and plants is a simple amenity that can enhance a course, as well as an entire facility, according to many in the business.
“The natural setting and garden-like setting, people never get tired of that,” says Glenn Lynn, chief operations officer of Harris Miniature Golf in Wildwood, N.J. “When my customers call me and ask me what they should change, I tell them to rotate your flowers, make some changes in the landscaping.”
Lynn says course owners will often look to spruce up their course with a windmill here or water wheel there, something simple to liven up a hole. Arne Lundmark, president and CEO of Adventure Golf Services in Traverse City, Mich., isn’t surprised.
“You want a miniature golf course, not just a putting course,” he says. “If it’s not fun for kids and families, it’s not going to work.”
The Future Looks Green and Gray
Lomma, one of the founding fathers of the industry, says courses combining challenging, realistic-to-golf putting, plus a little classic miniature golf architecture, are the most popular with his customers. His clients, as well as those of other manufacturers and designers, are international as well as domestic.
Lomma Miniature Golf has sold pre-fabricated courses in Africa, China and Siberia the last few years, and Lomma laughs when he hears people stress location, location, location. “My first miniature golf was behind an A&P grocery store, a block-and-a-half off the main street and you couldn’t see it,” he recalls. “You had to go find it, but word-of-mouth was all we needed. Miniature golf is a planned activity. People talk about it at lunch, say that’s what they’re going to do tonight. Location isn’t as important as it is in some businesses.”
But, as Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Amusement Products President Dutch McGrath III, says, what’s old is new again. “Miniature golf has been around nearly 100 years. Theming will always be part of it, and water and landscaping are the trends now. Bigger greens make the course look nicer and I think you’ll see more of that.”
Bigger greens are in vogue not only for the look of the course but out of necessity. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) officially came into play on miniature golf courses in 2002, after nine years of study and debate at the federal level. Essentially, the guidelines now established by the Access Board require miniature courses to have at least 50 percent of the holes on the course accessible to potential disabled customers, and those holes must be consecutive to create a “socially integrated experience.”
No other issue, not even marketability, has had such an impact on miniature golf course design in recent years. Harris Miniature Golf has built a handful of municipal courses, where the requirements were 100 percent accessibility, and their work was even audited to make sure it was on target with the specifications.
“I think, like everyone, we’re dealing with it as best we can,” Lynn says. “We didn’t have to go back and change anything so it was OK, but I think it’s hard to apply this to miniature golf, an elected activity. This isn’t like building a ramp to a public building. Every person chooses to play miniature golf and probably expects a little bit of a physical challenge.”
Although the ADA is controversial within the industry, Olesen, for one, sees some advantages in changing designs to conform to the guidelines, which are still being debated.
“We can design great miniature golf courses with all 18 holes [accessible],” Olesen says. “And that’s the way we do it for reasons beyond the law itself—mothers with strollers and the graying of America. The fastest growing demographic is the age over 65. Who spends more money on kids today than grandparents, especially out-of-the-house recreation? It only makes sense to make courses comfortable for them.”
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