Wacky game still popular at beach

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. — In a world in which Grand Theft Auto IV can make $500 million in its first week of existence, how can the most innocent game of all survive?

We speak, of course, of miniature golf (goofy golf, adventure golf or Putt-Putt). The number of courses has declined over the years, but there's no real threat of the cheery yet maddening game going under. Mini golf is targeted at people 4 to 104, and those in the know fully expect the 4-year-olds to be playing in 100 years.

"We come every time we're here," said Marilyn Thomas of Towson, Md., playing several rounds with her twin boys, 12. "For us, it's as much a part of the beach as the sand is."

Once, miniature golf was for rich ladies who were too delicate or modest to swing a club past their shoulders. Then it became the quintessential Everyman's game, offering the best chance for an 8-year-old to whump Dad in competition and an innocent setting for millions of awkward teenage dates.

Mini golf began in Scotland in the mid-19th century, with no thought of wacky. It was simply a cheap knockoff of its more refined cousin, targeted toward women. While men played the real thing, ladies could play 50-yard courses that used bunkers and ponds as obstacles. The first U.S. mini golf course opened in Pinehurst, N.C., in 1916, but it wasn't very wacky: It was modeled after gardens at the Louvre in Paris and was never opened to the public.

Then came Tom Thumb Golf.Built atop Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Tenn., it's fair to say Tom Thumb brought the wacky. Frieda Carter, a plumber's wife, used leftover tile, hollow logs and pieces of sewer pipe to create the first unique mini-golf course.

The game took off and got a little too lively for some. Throughout the 1930s and '40s — when there were about 50,000 mini-golf outlets nationwide — dozens of local laws were created to regulate the courses, which often would stay open until dawn while players kept neighborhoods awake.

There were no pirate ship themes, no chances to win a free round with a hole-in-one, no crazy hats. That changed in the 1960s, thanks in part to the man who still runs Old Pro Golf empire, with seven courses, in Ocean City, Md.

In the early days, Herb Schoellkopf was a pioneer of the Philadelphia school of mini golf, a movement involving course owners who wanted to make the sport even wackier. They created themed courses, playing off popular fads: Pirates were big hits then as now.

"When you think of the old courses with a flat path and one obstacle per hole, and now they're more like life-sized dioramas," said Rick Schoellkopf, Herb's son.

He said the cost of play hasn't increased much. But what was once a game open only to the elite has become big business that welcomes the masses and struggles with costs. All but the most well-established or well-funded course operators have been pushed out of the market in some areas. The cost of land and the push to go bigger and flashier don't come cheap.

Rehoboth Beach has four courses, down from about 15 a decade ago. Condos now sit where many courses once did. In Myrtle Beach, one newer course was reported to cost $4.5 million to build. Schoellkopf said that someone breaking into the business needs at least a quarter-million dollars to create a new course, excluding the cost of land, just to keep up.

The Schoellkopfs learned that mini golf is best at the beach. Once the owners of 13 courses in five states, they have eliminated all but the Ocean City sites because of high land prices and lack of interest in suburbs and cities. From a peak of 50,000 courses in the middle of the last century, it's estimated there are only about 7,500 left.

Of course, mini golf belongs at the beach. There's no homework, no soccer practice, and there's (probably) no Wii golf at the rental house. In this age of overscheduled first-graders and BlackBerry-addicted parents, about the only time for a mindless round of mini golf is during a beach vacation.

"It's the best thing to do at the beach because everybody can play together," said Max Mayer, 10, of New Jersey, who was at Rehoboth's Shell We Golf. "But I really like it because I always win."