T & K’s Golf Course
Features
Hole 1:
You must traverse past a tricky set of ridges on the first shot, making it over the first, and not quite all the way to the second. When done correctly, you can line yourself up for a beautiful bank shot off the right side wall and into the cup.
Hole 2:
Featuring a dangerously studded 180° turn around, you can get sent back to the beginning just as easily as you can thread the needle. This hole has the widest variety of ball paths that can result in a hole-in-1, although it is by no means easy.
Hole 3:
The pictures really don’t do this hole justice. Our landlord must have been looking out for us and made sure the garage floor wasn’t flat at all under hole 3, providing a series of dangerous downhill putts that can leave you in the rough.
Hole 4:
Inspired by our recent trip to the Great Wall of China, my roommate Kellen and I decided we would create a seemingly insurmountable challenge for our visitors. Hit the ball with the perfect amount of force at this steep wall for a gentle plop & roll forward towards the cup. Of course, for those who aren’t adventurous enough to make it over the wall, you can try to make it through the narrow gap beneath the bridge on the right hand side, bouncing towards the cup off of a simple wooden redirect.
Hole 5:
Good luck making it off of our 3-way ramp and into the center cup on this unusual hole #5. If you don’t you risk gaining penalty strokes for landing a ball in the outer cups!
The Story
The beginning
As the legend has it, one day Tim and Kellen were fixing up their very poorly kept garage in a rental house so that they could enjoy the beautiful scenery of their backyard without fear of wasps (which had currently set up a wasp fortress in a deteriorating garage wall). At this very moment, Kellen, who peaked in high school as the best golfer of his class, brought up how sweet it would be to have our own mini golf course - he saw some people online that installed these into people’s backyards. No way could we afford to buy this custom mini golf service, but we already had everything we needed to watch some youtube and screw some wood together. By the end of that weekend, I was determined to make a golf course in our very own garage.
The design
After weeks of attempting to plan out a real course, Tim and Kellen hadn’t gotten too far. Rough plans had been made and executed on building up a raised floor so that we could use authentic golfer cups. However, no real blueprints for the layout of the course actually existed yet. Some serious R&D needed to happen or this project would stop in its tracks. Sooo, I went out and played 36 holes of mini golf with a friend’s little brother. We got back from a tough day of research on the local mini golf courses, and 8 year-old Landon Pearson used painters tape and sharpies to lay out the first three holes of the course onto the carpet. We made the last couple holes fit in the remaining space and never looked back. Thanks, Landon!
post-build
Since building the course, our lives have changed dramatically. We now get to say that we live on a golf course and we get to play mini golf whenever we please. It’s an excellent excuse to take a 10 minute break from homework, however, it is frequently a little bit too easy to turn that 10 minute break into a 45 minute break.