The History of Mini Golf
Who doesn't love a game of Mini Golf? The game - also known as Crazy Golf or Miniature Golf - is a fun and competitive activity loved by everyone, and it's a fast-paced entertainment that suits parties of any kind. Mini golf is perfect for stag events and birthdays, or you can play a game of mini golf at your next work day out with all of your colleagues. You might see it at corporate fun days, exhibitions, and much more.
But what is the history of Mini Golf? Although the game might seem like it could've existed for millennia, it's actually much more recent than you think!
Mini Golf and Crazy Golf - A Brief History
Mini golf doesn't have a long history, and it's relatively modern compared to other funfair games and entertainment. It has its origins back in the 20th century, with a 1912 edition of the Illustrated London News creating a game called "Gofstacle" which combined the popular game of golf with different obstacles and challenges.
After this, small golf courses started popping up in a few places, including North Carolina and Tennessee. However, mini golf courses were still in their early years, and the original game of golf was still much more popular than the miniature 'Crazy' version.
This all changed in 1922, when golf enthusiast Thomas McCullough Fairbairn created artificial grass that was just right to play this exciting new game. Suddenly, mini golf was an accessible game that could be played across the US, and artificial mini golf courses started appearing across the country! By the end of the 1920s there were 150 rooftop mini golf courses in New York and even more across the rest of America.
In 1930, America introduced its first mini golf tournament, making this entertaining game into a sporting competition for golf lovers across the world to watch and enjoy. However, the mini golf came to a grinding halt as the Great Depression hit America in the 1930s, and the idea of playing crazy golf competitively has only just come back onto the radar of American sports professionals in recent years.
After the Depression, many people started to improve the original game of mini golf invented back in the early 20th century. No longer did the game just consist of banks, curves, and pipes. Now, inventors and players started to create more complicated and entertaining obstacles, including windmills, wells, castles, animals and more.
The game was now more like the one we might see at parties or funfairs today, and it took the world by storm! During the Vietnam War, the military shipped specially-made golf courses across to the war front, offering an entertaining break for the soldiers living over there.
To this day, mini golf remains one of the most popular entertainment options for parties and events across America and Europe, and offers anyone the chance to try their luck and impress everyone with their fantastic skills.
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Mini Golf Turned One Golfing Skill into a Game of Its Own
Mini golf takes one familiar part of golf, putting, and builds an entire activity around it. Instead of requiring long fairways and a large course, players progress through a series of short holes where accuracy, angles and obstacle design become the main challenge.
That places Mini Golf Experience somewhere between a sporting activity and an event game, making it quite different from both full-size golf and conventional fairground rides.
The Obstacles Became Part of Mini Golf's Identity
Mini golf courses gained much of their character from the features placed between the teeing position and the hole. Slopes, corners, barriers and themed obstacles can turn a simple putt into a problem that players need to read before taking their shot.
If you are more interested in playing than history, What Are the Rules of Mini Golf? explains the basic rules and provides a useful companion to this guide.
Compact Courses Opened Up New Places to Play
One of the important characteristics of mini golf is that a course can be created on a much smaller footprint than conventional golf. That helped the activity move into leisure venues and, eventually, temporary event environments.
9 Hole Mini Golf demonstrates how the format can now be provided as a mobile attraction, allowing organisers to incorporate a complete sequence of holes into suitable event spaces.
Mini Golf Developed into a Social Activity
Players take turns, compare scores and progress through the course together, giving mini golf a naturally social structure. It does not depend on everyone participating simultaneously, and spectators can follow the game while waiting for their turn.
That quality helps explain its use alongside garden games, sports games and other activities where participation can form part of a wider event programme.
The Format Also Works for Groups and Colleagues
Mini golf can introduce light competition without requiring participants to have extensive golfing experience. Scores provide an easy way to compare performances, while individual holes create repeated opportunities for different players to do well.
Why Mini Golf Is Great for Team Building Days looks specifically at this use of the activity, while team building contains other options for organisers planning group entertainment.
Mini Golf Sits Between Sport, Skill Game and Event Attraction
Its unusual position is one reason mini golf has proved adaptable. Putting provides the sporting element, obstacles create the game, scoring adds competition, and course design turns the whole activity into an attraction.
For organisers considering other participation-led formats, skill games, competitive games and carnival games provide several different approaches to testing accuracy and ability.
Follow Mini Golf into the Wider History of Games
Our Guides cover the origins and development of many other familiar activities. What Is the History of Chess?, What Is the History of Table Tennis? and What Is the History of Hoopla? provide three very different examples of games that developed around their own rules, equipment and styles of play.
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