I’m not a golfer. Maybe you are. I can, however, understand the interest and obsession generated by the game. Other players, tiny easy-to-lose ball, great distances, obstacles on an undulating landscape, and a little cup challenge every golfer’s patience and skill. And then one has the pressure of yard work: replacing divots, that is. My understanding doesn’t entice me to play golf; it is expensive, runs slow, takes hours, and seems to require clothing brighter than hunter’s orange, colors that make the golfer easier to find than the golf ball. And the carts! Oh! The carts. Not much exercise there.
That’s why long ago, in the 1960s, in fact, I invented an alternative version of the game: Contact golf. * Two or four players, one ball, and rugby roughness with the exception of this: no blind-side tackle on a putt. Now, there’s a game with real challenges and some exercise. It’s a game that prepares one for the real world.
Sorry, duffers. I’m not making fun of your obsession. Whereas it is true that golf frustrates its players, it also offers them a day of relaxation and camaraderie, fresh air in a controlled wilderness, and a clubhouse bar—all pleasant diversions except for those landscaping divot jobs. Presidents have played the game to escape as much as they can the pressures of running the world. Of course, they probably have people who replace the divots for them.
For those who aren’t golfers but who want to spend an hour with date or family without the expense and duration of an eighteen-hole outing, there’s miniature golf. Played on short, artificial fairways and greens with obstacles no more challenging than model windmills, little bridges, and gentle slopes leading to the holes, miniature golf is an example of what an affluent, civilized society does to reality: Shortens both space and time, neatens the environment, and limits the skill and danger required to negotiate its bends and turns.
Miniature golf, regardless of claims that it gives one putting practice, isn’t “real golf.” Even on a manicured green, variables of slope and blades of grass make all putts a challenge that a carpet can’t match. The point is that miniature golfers can’t take on competitors who practice the full game that requires clubs of different lengths and pitches adapted to different “natural” conditions.
It seems to me—a non-golfer, remember—that miniature golf is an analog for a society bent on making safe spaces for its youth so that they don’t hear anything offensive. The ramifications of this are more serious than those associated with miniature golfers trying to play an eighteen-hole PGA course. Reality can be very rough. For those in war zones and crime-ridden neighborhoods, negotiating the turns and bends can be far worse than playing the entire course in the rough. Real offenses occur. People don’t replace the divots; rather, they make bomb craters in the fairways—which, by the way, are in no way “fair.”
The inevitability of hard times is a reality for every society and individual. Preparation for those hard times is prudent. Instead, some of our western societies in general and individuals in particular seem to suggest that playing miniature golf is the same as playing golf. In the “real” world the game is contact golf.
*I did not copyright the game's rules. I vaguely remember seeing later in a commercial the idea that I had spread as a joke among friends all those years ago. Then, there's the YouTube comic video of Tiger Woods tackling someone on a golf course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMjIvhQtFjI
That’s why long ago, in the 1960s, in fact, I invented an alternative version of the game: Contact golf. * Two or four players, one ball, and rugby roughness with the exception of this: no blind-side tackle on a putt. Now, there’s a game with real challenges and some exercise. It’s a game that prepares one for the real world.
Sorry, duffers. I’m not making fun of your obsession. Whereas it is true that golf frustrates its players, it also offers them a day of relaxation and camaraderie, fresh air in a controlled wilderness, and a clubhouse bar—all pleasant diversions except for those landscaping divot jobs. Presidents have played the game to escape as much as they can the pressures of running the world. Of course, they probably have people who replace the divots for them.
For those who aren’t golfers but who want to spend an hour with date or family without the expense and duration of an eighteen-hole outing, there’s miniature golf. Played on short, artificial fairways and greens with obstacles no more challenging than model windmills, little bridges, and gentle slopes leading to the holes, miniature golf is an example of what an affluent, civilized society does to reality: Shortens both space and time, neatens the environment, and limits the skill and danger required to negotiate its bends and turns.
Miniature golf, regardless of claims that it gives one putting practice, isn’t “real golf.” Even on a manicured green, variables of slope and blades of grass make all putts a challenge that a carpet can’t match. The point is that miniature golfers can’t take on competitors who practice the full game that requires clubs of different lengths and pitches adapted to different “natural” conditions.
It seems to me—a non-golfer, remember—that miniature golf is an analog for a society bent on making safe spaces for its youth so that they don’t hear anything offensive. The ramifications of this are more serious than those associated with miniature golfers trying to play an eighteen-hole PGA course. Reality can be very rough. For those in war zones and crime-ridden neighborhoods, negotiating the turns and bends can be far worse than playing the entire course in the rough. Real offenses occur. People don’t replace the divots; rather, they make bomb craters in the fairways—which, by the way, are in no way “fair.”
The inevitability of hard times is a reality for every society and individual. Preparation for those hard times is prudent. Instead, some of our western societies in general and individuals in particular seem to suggest that playing miniature golf is the same as playing golf. In the “real” world the game is contact golf.
*I did not copyright the game's rules. I vaguely remember seeing later in a commercial the idea that I had spread as a joke among friends all those years ago. Then, there's the YouTube comic video of Tiger Woods tackling someone on a golf course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMjIvhQtFjI
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