Miniature golf
Miniature golf is an offshoot of the sport of golf focusing solely on the putting aspect of its parent game. The aim of the game is to score the lowest number of points. It is played on courses consisting of a series of holes similar to those of its parent, but the holes are short.
The game uses artificial putting surfaces, a geometric layout often requiring non-traditional putting lines such as bank shots, and artificial obstacles such as tunnels, tubes, ramps, moving obstacles like windmills, and walls made of concrete, metal, or fiberglass. When miniature golf retains many of these characteristics but without the use of any props or obstacles, it is purely a mini version of its parent game.
Nomenclature
While the World Minigolf Sport Federation prefers to use the name minigolf, the game has [|several other names] which vary between countries, including mini-golf, midget golf, goofy golf, shorties, extreme golf, crazy golf, adventure golf, mini-putt, and putter golf. The name Putt-Putt is the trademark of an American company that builds and franchises miniature golf courses in addition to other family-oriented entertainment. The term putt-putt is sometimes used colloquially to refer to the game itself. The term minigolf was formerly a registered trademark of a Swedish company that built its own patented type of minigolf courses.History
Geometrically shaped minigolf courses made of artificial materials began to emerge during the early 20th century. The earliest documented mention of such a course is in the June 8, 1912, edition of The Illustrated London News, which introduces a minigolf course called the Gofstacle.The first standardized minigolf courses to enter commercial mass-production were the Thistle Dhu course in 1916 in Pinehurst, North Carolina, and the 1927 Tom Thumb patent of Garnet Carter from Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. Thomas McCullough Fairbairn, a golf fanatic, revolutionized the game in 1922 with his formulation of a suitable artificial green—a mixture of cottonseed hulls, sand, oil, and dye. With this discovery, miniature golf became accessible everywhere; by the late 1920s there were over 150 rooftop courses in New York City alone and tens of thousands across the United States. This American minigolf boom of early 20th century came to an end during the Great Depression in the late 1930s. Nearly all minigolf courses in the United States were closed and demolished before the end of the 1930s. A rare surviving example from this period is the Parkside Whispering Pines Miniature Golf Course located near Rochester, New York, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.
The first miniature golf course in Canada was at the Maples Inn in Pointe-Claire, Quebec. The "Mapes" was constructed as a summer home in the 1890s but was renovated into a club in 1902, opened to the public in 1914, and had a miniature golf course in 1930. The popular nightspot burned in 1985.
European origins
One of the first documented minigolf courses in mainland Europe was built in 1926 by a man surnamed Schröder in Hamburg, Germany. Schröder had been inspired by his visit to the United States, where he had seen minigolf courses spreading across the country.In 1930 Edwin O. Norrman and Eskil Norman returned to Sweden from the United States, where they had stayed for several years and witnessed the golden days of the American minigolf boom. In 1931 they founded the company "Norman och Norrmans Miniatyrgolf" and began manufacturing standardized minigolf courses for the Swedish market. During the following years they spread this new leisure activity across Sweden, by installing minigolf courses in public parks and other suitable locations.
Swedish minigolf courses typically had a rectangular wooden frame surrounding the playing area made of tennis field sand; in contrast, American manufacturers used newly developed and patented felt as the surface of their minigolf courses. Felt did not become popular as a surface material in Sweden until in the mid-1960s—but since then it has become practically the only surface material used in Scandinavia and the United Kingdom, due to its favorable playing qualities in wet weather. Minigolf courses with a felt surface can be played in rainy weather, because water soaks through the felt into the ground. The other commonly used surface materials, concrete and fibre-cement, cannot be used in rainy weather, because the rainwater pools on them, stopping the ball from rolling.
The Swedish Minigolf Federation was founded in 1937, making it the oldest minigolf sport organization in the world. National Swedish championships in minigolf have been played yearly since 1939. In other countries minigolf sport federations were not founded until the late 1950s, due to the post-war economical depression.
In 1954, the minigolf course in Ascona, Switzerland, opened. It is the oldest course in the world which follows the norms of Paul Bongni.
Competitive games
The earliest documented minigolf competitions were played in the United States. The first National Tom Thumb Open minigolf tournament was arranged in 1930, with a total cash purse $10,000. Qualification play-offs were played in all of the 48 states, and the final competition on Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga, Tennessee, attracted over 200 players representing thirty states. After the Depression ten years later, minigolf died out as a competition sport in America, and has begun to recover only during the most recent decades. The American minigolf sport boom of the 1930s inspired many European countries, and the sport of minigolf lived on in Europe even after the American game fell into Depression.Post-depression U.S.
In 1938 Joseph and Robert Taylor from Binghamton, New York, started building and operating their own miniature golf courses. These courses differed from the ones in the late 20s and early 30s; they were no longer just rolls, banks, and curves, with an occasional pipe thrown in. Their courses not only had landscaping, but also obstacles, including windmills, castles, and wishing wells.Impressed by the quality of the courses, many customers asked if the Taylors would build a course for them. By the early 1940s, Joe and Bob formed Taylor Brothers, and were in the business of building miniature golf courses and supplying obstacles to the industry. During both the Korean and Vietnam Wars, many a G.I. played on a Taylor Brothers prefabricated course that the U.S. Military had contracted to be built and shipped overseas. In the 1950s, Don Clayton invented the Putt-Putt brand with a focus on treating minigolf seriously, emphasizing skill and player improvement. Most of the Putt Putt routes were 2-par holes involving ramps or angled blocks that could be mastered in one go through practice.
By the late 1950s, almost all supply catalogs carried Taylor Brother's obstacles. In 1961, Bob Taylor, Don Clayton of Putt-Putt, and Frank Abramoff of Arnold Palmer Miniature Golf organised the first miniature golf association known as NAPCOMS. Their first meeting was held in New York City. Though this organization only lasted a few years it was the first attempt to bring miniature golf operators together to promote miniature golf.
In 1955, Lomma Golf, Inc., founded by Al Lomma and his brother Ralph Lomma, led the revival of wacky, animated trick hazards. These hazards required both accurately aimed shots and split-second timing to avoid spinning windmill blades, revolving statuary, and other careening obstacles.
The book, Tilting At Windmills: How I Tried To Stop Worrying And Love Sport, by Andy Miller tells the story of the formerly sports-hating author attempting to change by competing in miniature golf, including events in Denmark and Latvia.
In the United States, National Miniature Golf Day is held yearly on the second Saturday of May. The event had its inaugural celebration on May 12, 2007, and was officially recognized and published in 2008's edition of Chase's Calendar of Events.
Other countries
By the 1950s the American Putt-Putt company was exporting their minigolf courses to South Africa, Australia, Japan, Korea, India, Iran, Italy, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, and the Eastern Bloc.Governing body
History of WMF
The sport of miniature golf is governed internationally by the World Minigolf Sport Federation, headquartered in Göteborg, Sweden. The WMF was a member of Global Association of International Sports Federations, before its dissolution, and within it, of the Alliance of Independent Recognized Members of Sport. WMF is also member of The Association for International Sport for All.Track golf developed, at a competitive level, quite rapidly in the countries of central and northern Europe starting from the mid-fifties: the costs were low and the game was played with only a golf ball. Then, in the European Championship of 1961, an Italian team signed up and showed up with two balls that were not "golf balls", but lacquered balls that were later used as an experiment by Willy Korn who built a machine in 1963 to lacquer the rough balls arriving from Japan. Later the balls treated with acetone and the "plastics" arrived. With the manufacture of soft balls by N. Wagner of Ingolstadt there was a notable leap in quality and "bounce". Demand increased rapidly and supply improved all sports equipment by providing new clubs, ball bags and increasingly sophisticated balls that continued to diversify in terms of weight, hardness and bounce, making more than 20,000 different models available to players that progressively improved performance on the course.
In the meantime, at the federal level, 2 different international federations had been established: one for minigolf and one for miniature golf. With the unification of the two federations, cobigolf, sterngolf and filzgolf also entered the specialties of the International European federation I.B.G.V..
Minigolf courses flourished in Austria in the 1950s. In 1962, the Austrian Minigolf Association was founded, followed the following year by the Miniature Golf Sports Federation. The first miniature golf tournaments were also held that year.
In 1976, the Austrian Minigolf Association governed the sport, but since 1980, a parallel federation, the International Minigolf Federation, has existed.
In 1993, the IBGV became the World Minigolf Federation. Since then, new representatives from the continent, such as the United States and Japan, have been integrated into the WMF.
It organizes World Championships for youth and elite players, and Continental Championships in Europe, Asia and the United States, held in alternate years.
The WMF organizes World Championships, which take place every two years, and World Junior/European Open Championships, each held annually.
Minigolf was a demonstration sport at the 1989 World Games in Karlsruhe.