The paradox of "premium mini golf"
MEDIA: Kenny and April, Drunk at the Putt-Putt (Eastbound and Down, S3 E1)
EVENT: Getting drunk at the putt-putt is now a viable business plan.
ANALYSIS: there was a period there when i was like seven or eight when i was obsessed with mini golf. my parents were building a house and my mom would always take me to this one putt-putt place that was just called “putt-putt” (it’s a thing) in spartanburg south carolina that was in the parking lot of a strip mall that had stuff like a big lots and a tj maxx in it. it was super basic, just 18 perfunctory holes of chewed-up carpet-grass, the point was to play the angles rather than have your ball do a bunch of crazy stuff like go through a windmill or whatever. my parents were building their house at the time and that was my reward for accompanying her to home depot and/or lowes.
mini golf, in my mind, will always be associated with urban sprawl, kitsch, productized fun rather than the real thing. like, there’s a reason that kenny powers takes his ex, april, mini-golfing when she comes to visit him in myrtle beach: it’s on the very short list of things you can do at night in myrtle beach, and unlike clubs or the thing where you can go see an endless string of impersonators sing cover songs, mini golf is both inexpensive and kid-friendly. mini golf spots also tend to be stacked side-by-side in an endless procession of Fun that also includes pre-dave-and-busters arcade-style places with go-karts and batting cages and laser tag. often, though not exclusively, the Fun Emporiums will offer mini golf as well. but the point i am making here is that this is the domain of mini golf.
“as a mother,” a concerned mother tells april in the above eastbound and down scene, “i would think that you would not want to be drunk at the putt-putt… in front of kids.” but! some enterprising souls have put their heads together and asked, “what if we made a safe space where people could be drunk at the putt-putt… not in front of kids? and, like, what if it were more expensive than regular putt-putt?”
just like with food courts, driving ranges, arcades, and a bunch of other stuff, mini golf has spent the past couple years quietly inching its way into the realm of Premium. there’s a thing happening right now called popstroke, which is attempting to do for mini golf what topgolf did for the driving range — turn it into a Destination for Adults trying to have a Premium Night Out. it’s an “experiential golf and casual dining concept merging a dynamic, technologically-advanced golf environment with food and beverage,” per its website, and tiger woods and his design firm “will be responsible for designing the putting courses” at future popstrokes. currently, it’s got a grand total of six locations (or should i refer to them as “concept manifestations?”), including one in jupiter, florida, which is the unofficial home of professional golf. actually all of them are in florida, and the three they’re working on “bringing to market” are all in arizona.
yet, as the golf biz substack perfect putt recently noted, popstroke’s valuation grew to $650 billion after golf megacorp taylormade invested in it in january. this comes after blackrock invested $150 million in puttshack, another adult mini golf place that’s “edgy” in that it’s indoors, the holes don’t really resemble even regular mini golf holes (there’s one that looks like a beer pong table), you’re supposed to drink there, and, per its website, “we only play straight up jams!” they’ve got sample playlists on offer, as well, and due to puttshack’s edginess, the songs contain swears (they warn you not to play their playlists around “kiddos” or “karens”). and damn… given puttshack’s stated anti-kiddos-and-karens stance, i’m pretty sure that they want — nay, need — you to get drunk at the putt-putt.
now, common sense would suggest that “premium adult mini golf concept with booze, either indoors or outdoors” should not be a viable business, because it is not the 2000s and we as a culture have moved on from declaring that things like this are “epic.” and yet! this is not actually how businesses work, apparently. it’s more like, “as a business guy, i believe that this epic drunk people mini golf concept has a potential future earnings of $X bajillion because of Y market factors, Z names somehow attached to it, and also it’s run by a dude i went to wharton with. here’s a giant bag of money.” which, like, good for you if you can get it, but this is not a real basis for making actual money from actual people.
i play a shitload of golf but i’m in no way a “golf purist,” and generally speaking i think stuff like topgolf and adult mini golf are fine for what they are: golf-adjacent activities that sort of turn it into bowling or whatever. they might even be good for golf! if you go to one of these things maybe you’ll have fun and be like “oh golf is actually sick and not lame” and start playing golf for real. i’m more concerned with the idea that everything must be scalable, re-branded in some new, enticing way that probably makes for a kickass powerpoint presentation but is in no way reflective of how things might actually play out in “the market.” like, golf is cool because every course is unique and you’re able to sort of know what you’re going to get but also be surprised by the character of a course, or a weird thing that you got to witness happening in nature, or even just how you respond to a very different set of stimuli than in regular life. loading “golf experiences” up with a bunch of technology and replicating it across the country kinda drains all the stuff out of the game that makes it special. then again, maybe this is all an elaborate hedge in the event of a mid-2020s Epic Revival that we don’t yet see coming.
