New mini golf courses built this spring in Tupper Lake, New York; Lansing, Michigan; and Daytona Beach, Florida, are offering the latest evidence that this is a booming industry with annual revenues now estimated at the $2 billion level and above.
According to the National Golf Foundation, up to 18 million people in the U.S. play mini golf at least four times a year. Nearly half of those players are women, with the average age being 34: “Demographics many would love to see” in the traditional game of golf, notes NGF.
Reports the Washington Examiner: “High-tech courses have incorporated video games-like technology and render scores in points rather than strokes. Courses have also borrowed features from other kinetic activities, including pool, baseball, foosball, zip lines, and slides.”
That’s not to say that many courses still don’t rely on the traditional miniature windmills, castles, and small lagoons to challenge players.
The new Daytona Beach mini golf course is part of famed golfer Tiger Woods’ PopStroke brand, which includes restaurant and bar amenities, outdoor dining areas, ice cream parlors, and large TV screens everywhere.
PopStroke courses have now been opened in various spots in Florida, as well as Alabama. The announcement of the Daytona PopStroke project was regarded as important enough for the city’s Mayor, Derrick Henry, to announce: “It adds value to our community as a place to visit to have a good time.”
The Tupper Lake mini golf course is being built at the site of a former gas station, with the pump canopy repurposed for outdoor seating, and the course itself featuring a 9-foot waterfall, hidden passages for golf balls, and general water obstacles.
According to the book Miniature Golf by John Margolies, the first mini golf course was built in 1926 on the roof of a New York skyscraper in the middle of the financial district and was designed for “overwrought bankers eager to unwind.” The concept soon expanded to some 150 other rooftop courses until the Great Depression dried up financing.
In the years after World War II, particularly in the 1950s, mini golf made a comeback with new courses opening up primarily in the South and West. A 1951 ad for a course in Bossier City, Louisiana invited guests to play at the “most popular miniature golf course in the Arkansas-Louisiana-Texas” area, with the lure of “delicious ice-cold watermelon after the game.”
In an article written this spring for the publication In Business by Ben Sheppard, chief information officer for Puttshack, a mini golf course company with locations in Scottsdale and Denver, among roughly two dozen other locations nationally, it was noted that such courses are today a thing of technological wonder.
Increasingly, mini golf operators today are using analytic tools to “track metrics such as average score, time spent on each hole, and peak hours of operation.”
Such information, added Sheppard, allows those operators to “optimize course layouts and tailor the overall experience to meet the needs of their target audience.”
By Garry Boulard
Image Credit: Courtesy of Unsplash
