UPS AND DOWNS OF THE LATEST CRAZE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19268, 3 January 1931, Page 9

UPS AND DOWNS OF THE LATEST CRAZE.

MONEY WON And lost IN'MIDGET GOLF BOOM

The battle of midget golf is on! In London and the South the craze is practically over; but in parts of the North the new game grows in popularity (says, the “Sunday Chronicle”). The fate of a large number of speculators hangs in. the balance. big sums of money have been lost in the attempt to produce in this country a midge.tr golf craze similar to that which swept America. But fortunes may* still be made!

Inquiries made by the “Sunday Chronicle” show that already many miniature golf courses have been closed down in London. Yet, in Manchester, the game seems to have caught on, and several additional new courses are about to be opened.

Within the past three weeks 22 sets of a popular design have been sold in Scotland. In Glasgow, in particular, the game is booming, and the present courses are crowded, white others are, in process of construction.

In London there has been nothing like the boom in midget golf that was expected. The “boom” there lasted scarcely a couple of weeks. Popularity Wants.

There is one course in the West End which attracted crowds of people during the first week after its opening. It was difficult to get a game there. Recently on the same course in one hour only si* people played. “Undoubtedly a great many people have lost money on midget golf,” the manager of a club who installed one of the courses told the “Sunday Chronicle.” “In our case we spent more than £2OO on a patent course. The outfit to-day is worth, perhaps, twenty or thirty pounds, and our total takings have been negligible. “We gambled on the craze for midget golf lasting six months and took premises at a heavy rental. We calculated the average number of players per day we should need to make- a descent profit. The that on only two or three days lafter the first week has the number 'been tip to that average shows how thorough the ‘Hop* has been.”

The course at a Manchester stores is crowded by business men in the lunch hour, and Newcastle business men manage to put in a quarter of an hour at a course at a cinema when they go out for morning coffee. “We find the same people returning day after day,” said the manageress of the latter, “and although we do not have Sunday play our patrons are allowed to practise on Sundays, so intent are they on improving their scores as they progress in the game.” More Difficult Hazards. A Newcastle garage proprietor who has had his garage converted into an eighteen-hole course has also fitted a larger course with more ordinary hazards. This, he says, attracts expert golfers, who have no patience in dodging pipes, tunnels, ponds and the like with which the smaller courses are equipped. In Liverpool a number of people spend the whole lunch hour playing, while others play almost every day, but except for lunch time and when the nearby workshops are closed for the day the courses now are not very busy. Seldom more than two people play at a time. Often there are more watchers than golfers. Proprietors of other courses in the North have varying experiences. They have a regular number of patrons, but many are of the opinion that the craze will die a natural death within the next few months. But they mean to make a fight to get back their money. A well-known golfer told the “Sunday Chronicle” he believed that if the game were staged in its proper atmosphere—in the open air—and if something decent in the way of putting problems were introduced, together with more scope for chip shots, it would take on.