Hardscrabble, beaten, looted, burned, the once-bustling stretch of East 63rd Street that runs west from Jackson Park under closed “L” tracks has seen it all over the last 30 years, from riots to arson to major demolitions.
But, as urban theorists have long maintained, even heavily pounded areas of the city have a way of renewing themselves, if people come up with bright ideas–and enough energy and backing to carry them out.
Like miniature golf?
“It all started at a huddle of our staff people,” Harvey “Jock” Johnson, executive director of the South Side YMCA was saying Tuesday, as he told a visitor about brainstorming for ways to improve the neighborhood.
“We were wondering what we could do for families that was different. And this,” he noted, speaking of a state-of-the-art 18-hole miniature golf course complete with trees, waterfalls and benches that opened on the YMCA’s front lawn last weekend, “turned out better than any of us ever expected.”
The what, when and where of the 20,000-square-foot operation, the only miniature golf course on the South Side, are quite simple.
Open daily, weather permitting, from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. and an hour later on Saturdays and Sundays, it costs $4 for adults and $3 for those under 19. All necessary equipment–a putter and a steel-centered golf ball that does not ricochet as much–is provided.
“Get your putt in gear,” is one of the course’s slogans. And, staffers say, since it opened last Friday, it has been “very, very crowded.”
More subtle is the why and how of it all, but such matters were hinted at by speakers at an opening day of balloons, hot dogs and hoopla.
“Our community is not so much divided as disconnected,” intoned Rev. Willie T. Barrow, co-chairman of Operation PUSH, while urging higher powers to “please interest our children in some good moral sports.”
“A grand occasion–part of the rebirth of the Woodlawn community,” proclaimed Ald. Arenda Troutman (20th) who later led her son, Jerimiah, 3, around the course in time-honored parental fashion, standing behind, leaning over and guiding shots, using skills she picked up, she said, “as a child in Ohio–where there were putt-putt courses all over.”
“I’m all excited about this,” noted Babette Johnson, a preschool teacher at the YMCA who then punched in a hole-in-one and shrieked, “I’m going to call my father! He’s been playing golf since I was born!”
Behind her, Bria Gooch, 3, showing determined form as she swung her club from side to side, finished out her first hole, in 22 strokes.
“I like it,” Bria said.
As miniature golf enthusiasts are quick to point out, there is often more going on at a miniature course than meets the eye.
For starters, the game is less disputatious that the full-size version, as Castle & Windmill, a magazine for the small-course set, recently noted in its “Top 10 Reasons Why Miniature Golf Is Better Than Golf.” Among them: “No long boring discussions about `which club will get the ball home.’ “
Also, miniature golf is much more of a family game, noted Ben Jones, the head of Recreation and Entertainment Consultants Inc. of Oakbrook Terrace, which designed the YMCA’s hilly course, built with YMCA funds at a cost of $250,000.
Following current trends overseas, where miniature golf has become a serious competitive sport promoted by the World Minigolfsport Federation, which has 40,000 members, the “Y” course was designed in “garden style, to simulate a more realistic putting surface,” Jones said.
Leaving out such traditional adornments as sphinxes, totem poles, smiling animals, mini-dinosaurs, castles, drawbridges, windmills, Buddhas with holes in their knees and spinning flowers that glow in the dark, this new type of course is built around “choice, chance and challenge,” Jones added.
On several holes, putters are offered a choice of approach. Some are easy. Some, hard. Other holes, with twisty-turny tunnels, drop a ball who-knows-where. “Some holes,” Jones said, “are challenging and reward a skilled player. On others, a 5-year-old with luck can beat a parent.” That, in turn, ties in with the sport’s long-term appeal.
As historians note, miniature golf became a national fad in 1930, a year after the Great Crash, at a time when problems of everyday life had swollen beyond manageable proportions. Here, mini-golf suggested, everything was brought down to less-than-normal size, making it a place where a person could relax and feel more in control of the surrounding environment.
Though the game has sunk far below its Depression peak of 23,000 courses, it keeps on. “After all,” suggests Constance Bond, who often writes about this small pursuit, “what better activity can there be for teenagers on a first date, or for a family doing the `Father Knows Best’ routine?”
To make its own course, and by extension its neighborhood, more user-friendly, YMCA officials deliberately put greens out front, instead of behind the building on a more protected site, as some had suggested.
Fencing was kept low, to make the course “an inviting, natural gateway” to East 63d Street, Johnson noted. A pass-through window, where mini-golfers can easily sign up, was drilled through the YMCA building’s outside brick wall “so you don’t feel you have to know somebody inside,” Jones said.
Already, YMCA staff members are talking of picnics, parties, even tournaments next spring, in the European style where players see the game as more like billiards, playing angles, banking shots, often against a time clock. Last August, one mini-golfer notes, championships in Denmark drew 25 countries.
“Walk five miles a day. Quit eating so much. Let your blood flow right. Come and take your exercise,” urged Barrow, stating her good-health regimen as she started off around the course.
“All those who want to get in a quick 18 rounds, follow me,” added “Jock” Johnson.
And many did.
