- Title
- Our State
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-
- Date
- August 2002
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- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
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Our State
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Seeing Green
At Putt-Putt Golf, a Fayetteville salesman’s creation, manicured
greens and a challenging game that emphasizes skill over luck are
par for the course — and no clowns' mouths or windmills in sight,
by .lininiv Tomlin
Gifted golfers — those who
know the courses’ well-
manicured greens like the backs
of their own golf gloves — should
dominate their opponents when they
happen to find themselves on a minia¬
ture golf course, right? After all,
putting is half the game of golf, and
you know what they say: "Drive for
show, but putt for dough."
Hut when it comes to putting, a
down's mouth can be a great equalizer.
So can a dragon's nostril, a tiger's tail, a
revolving windmill, or a spinning,
splashing waterwheel. For that matter,
so can a brick rail that offers unpre¬
dictable unkind bounces and ricochets.
Such offbeat obstacles are par for the
course m the whimsical world of Goofy
Golf, but they're enough to make a golf
purist, well, goofy.
Don Clayton, the quintessential golf
purist, recognized this fact nearly half
a century ago, when he found himself
on a rather hokey and unkempt minia¬
ture golf course. That evening’s wholly
dissatisfying experience led the
Fayetteville insurance agent to design
his own miniature golf course — Putt-
Putt. he called it — and it grew to
become a multimillion-dollar business
and one ol America's favorite pastimes.
Clayton’s brainchild became so
ingrained in American culture, in fact,
that today, plenty of Putt-Putt
Philistines — those who don't under¬
stand the distinction that sets Clayton's
game apart from all others — unwit¬
tingly use the terms "miniature golf"
and "Putt-Putt" interchangeably.
Clayton, who died in 1996, surely
was flattered that his legacy reached
that level of popularity, but he also
probably bristled at the notion of any¬
one lumping his game in with the
Goofy Golfs, Wacky Golfs, and Jungle
Golfs of the world.
Clayton’s course of action
The Putt-Putt story begins in 1954
when Clayton — then a 28-year-old
insurance hotshot — developed ulcers
from the high pressure, Type
work
ethic he had adopted. “He used to tell
me he almost had a nervous break¬
down from overworking himself so
badly," recalls Hill Kirby Jr., who prac¬
tically grew up on one of Clayton’s
Putt-Putt courses and as an adult
became one of his closest friends. When
a doctor suggested Clayton find time
for some rest and relaxation, he took a
much needed break; it was during that
time off that lie went out for an
evening of miniature golf and came
home with his vision for Putt-Putt.
“His idea was to develop good, whole¬
some family entertainment on a clean,
miniature golf course, and he wanted to
put some skill in the game,” Kirby says.
Until then, miniature golf courses — with
their assortment of quirky hazards —
had been based more on luck than skill,
а
fact that undoubtedly frustrated the golf
purist within Clayton.
With the help of his first wife, Kathry n
"Cub" Clayton, he sat down at a table
in his fathers house and mapped out
plans for the first 1 8 holes of the first
Putt-Putt course, drawing the individual
holes on three-by-five index cards. He
envisioned — and later trademarked —
the smooth, green carpets, orange rails,
and colored golf balls that are still the
signature of Putt-Pun courses today.
The first course opened in June 1954
on a lot near the intersection of
Fayetteville's Bragg Boulevard and Fort
Bragg Road, and it became an immedi¬
ate hole-in-one for Clayton. Charging
a quarter a game, he made $48 the
first night and $86 the next. Within
а
couple of weeks, he was already build¬
ing another 18-hole course right
beside the first one, to help meet the
growing demand. Fayetteville, largely
recognized as a military city, was sud¬
denly fostering an army of passionate
Putt-Putt patrons.
84 ( >ur Nt.ne \uguu 2002
