GOLF PLAYED INDOORS

Taranaki Daily News, 31 October 1930, Page 9

GOLF PLAYED INDOORS

THE WORLD’S LATEST PASTIME. OPENING AT NEW So thoroughly pervading the popular imagination that 135 courses are hardly adequate to cater for its patrons at San Francisco, and 28 courses! are being used to their capacity at Vancouver, a city the size of Auckland, midget golf, the world’s latest craze, is to be inaugurated in New Plymouth to-night by a local company. Australia has already succumbed to the craze as a willing victim. Two courses a day are being opened in Sydney and still the demand is unsatisfied. The stall seats in two theatres were removed and courses substituted. Enthusiasts clamour for the right to play. No less than 2000 persons used The Green Mill course at Auckland on Monday;, at one stage there were 96 playing simultaneously. “This course will be the most up-to-date in New Zealand,” said Mr. Stirling Rogers, its builder, yesterday, ■when a reporter visited The Green NJill Midget Golf Course in Devon Street, next the Presbyterian Church. “I have just returned from Sydney with the latest ideas concerning the game and these are being incorporated in the New Plymouth outfit—for the first time in this Dominion.” Mr. Rogers is the builder of the Civic Theatre, Auckland, three theatres at Melbourne and one at Perth, and he has constructed many amusement enterprises throughout Australia and New Zealand,

The building in which the course is situated was a hive of industry yesterday afternoon. About 40 carpenters and painters were working at top speed—and had been for several days—in order to have everything ready for this evening. “This will look very different to-morrow night,” said Mr. Rogers through the din of striking hammers, tramping feet and the grating noise of timber against timber. “We are going to arrange the lights so that they will cast no shadow. The reporter sat in the midst of tiny suburban villas, miniature castles, snowcovered mountains, green swards, rolling hills, oil derricks and bridges. One felt like Gulliver in the land of Lilliputians. Everything was small, and yet so real, and wherever one peered, over a roof or round a corner, another model was sure to be there to surprise by its novelty, its completeness or its amazingly fresh and natural colouring. But 'this—so one was informed —this was only the embryo of the spreading panorama that will present itself to-night. What is this midget golf? Some call it putting golf, indoor golf, miniature golf. Whatever its name, however, it is merely the old game of golf brought within reach of all —the outdoor game brought indoors so that it may be played in all weathers, day or night. The course comprises 18 holes; each has its own separate tee, fairway and “putting green and each its own hazards. Tho hazards of midget golf constitute probably its chief fascination. They are designed to test the skill of the most experienced. The ball may land in a sand bunker, or enter a castle by the wrong door and emerge at a place from which it will be possible to dislodge it only by the greatest ingenuity or luck, or by the loss of a stroke. There are streams, tunnels, bridges, oil derricks — all ready to tempt the thing in the wrong direction. And just so that no one can claim he has became an expert the management changes the position of the hazards at intervals.

Ordinary putters and ordinary golf balls are used for the game, the balls being coloured various hues in order that the players may know their own more readily. The fairways are Paid in heavy green beige stretched tightly above heavy fur felt. On this surface a ball may be hit with the greatest degree of accuracy.