Nashville Knucklehead

The Worst Golf Course Designer in the World

I played a lot of Putt Putt when I was a kid. Not miniature golf, mind you, with the windmills and the dinosaurs, but Putt Putt. The Brand. The Franchise. There was a Putt Putt Championship broadcast on ABC every year. I watched it every year.

The great thing about Putt Putt was how well thought-out it was from a golf point of view. Eighteen holes was par 36. Every hole was a par two and every hole had a hole-in-one as a possibility. The hazards and mounds and bumpers all served a purpose. You could play the undulations to make the putt. Putt Putt, in two words, kicked ass. I don't know if there are any of those franchises in existence anymore, I'm sure the land became more valuable than the game in most cases.

So today I got talked into going to play a couple of rounds of Glow Golf at Opry Mills by a certain 5-year-old who can pretty much talk me into anything. I hate, no wait, I HATE Glow Golf at Opry Mills.

The attraction is that it is lit in black light, and has glow in the dark golf balls and flourescent tape and paint all over everything. The reason I HATE Glow Golf in Opry Mills is because it has nothing to do with golf. Whoever built the thing had no clue about anything to do with putting a golf ball. It looks like it was put together by Cletus and his Uncle Bubba over a weekend with a bunch of scrap PVC, scrap wood, flourescent paint and three cases of beer. The "hazards" are randomly cut blobs covered in splattered glow paint, put haphazardly in the way of the path to the hole. There are holes where you actually have to lay up.

Yes, lay up. You don't lay up in miniature golf. At Glow Golf in Opry Mills, you have to.

The holes aren't even real golf holes, as is standard at all miniature golf courses on Earth. The holes are slices of PVC pipe. They aren't even all the same size. Not only are they not regulation, they aren't even the same from hole to hole.

The builder of Glow Golf in Opry Mills is, hands-down, the Worst Golf Course Designer in the World.

I didn't keep score. I know I kicked her ass. But I still lost 18 bucks. To the cashier.

posted by Nashville Knucklehead @ 3:24 PM