Your golf course architect will prepare detailed documentation, including contracts, plans and specifications to allow the project to be tendered. If you need them to, they will also assist in evaluating tender responses and select the best contractors for you. The documentation may include plans for: Grading. Drainage.
Designing your golf course should be a battle against nature but rather cooperation with it. Include all the naturally-occurring obstacles such as hillocks, trees, stones, puddles, sandboxes, groves, etc. The same goes for artificial obstacles like the water sprout or the laundry pole.
Wrap the top of the platform and the ramp in green felt, and cut out the three holes. Insert the elbow fittings into the bottom of the platform, twisting them in different directions. Add a bumper of composite baluster to the top of the platform. Now you're ready for some mini-golf. Grab your putter and hit the links!
Dig around the garage for bricks, cinder blocks, wood boards, plywood sheets, buckets, strips of plastic siding — anything that can serve as a barrier, ramp or obstacle [source: Carlson ]. Lay down bricks, cinder blocks or lumber in a large rectangle to frame the outside of the course.
If you don’t have a toy golf set get creative. Unless you’re playing outside and the kids don’t have wild swings, you can use superballs, ping pong balls, or even a tennis ball. No putter? Try out a sword, stick or even your own hands. Just keep the size of the ball in mind when you are creating your obstacles.
Use a cardboard box like Craftulate did here to create a simple three-hole obstacle for the kids. Make one hole harder by making angling the box, or try making the holes different sizes. You can also use empty cereal or tissue boxes. Try turning them on their side or even at an angle by taping them down with duct or packing tape.
Create an obstacle course more challenging than your local mini-golf with toys you have around the house.
If you are playing outside, create difficulty levels for each area by drawing targets or boundaries with chalk. Use rocks to make roadways that kids have to hit through.
Unlike many other games, less is more with golf. The lower your score the better you’re actually doing. Basically, each stroke you take counts as a point. If you want to be true to the sport assign each hole in your obstacle course a number of difficulty beginning at Par 3 and moving up.
Have you tried making a course at home? What are your ideas? Share them with us in a comment below.
1. Think about how much time and space you have. It will be more work than you think to design the course, maintain it, and depending on how complex it is, you may not be able to tear it down if you don't want it anymore. You will need a fairly large backyard in order to do this. Of course, it's just going to be one hole.
Start with the equipment. Make sure you have a pitching wedge/sand wedge and a putter. These are the only clubs you will really need if you're just golfing in your backyard. Make sure to have multiple balls, since you may lose some. Also make sure you have a good grass mower that can cut the grass nice and short.
You shouldn't need any more than three sand traps throughout your course. Try to have at least one along the side of the fairway and at least one in front, behind, or alongside the green. The sand traps should be no bigger than 5 feet (1.5 m). x 5 feet (1.5 m).
If you have a fairly sized backyard, your course should be about 15 yards (13.7 m) long .
Leave a few feet in between for the rough. The green should be, depending on the size of your course, roughly around 8 feet (2.4 m). x 8 feet (2.4 m). Try to make the green about the same width as the fairway.
Platform legs and most thin wood: Glue quickly and patch things up after gluing, it will make things look better and will perform better. Hole: Use a plastic cup and delicately put hot glue on four sides and stick it on, it is extremely strong. More delicate pieces: Use technique with the hole.
Cardstockish material: Use a hacksaw to cut it, hot glue works well.
If you’re mixing materials, most of the adhesives will stay the same. Styrofoam will stick to wood with wood glue, but don’t use hot glue to stick to cardboard, as wood glue works fine all ways. Ask Question.
Assemble your cup. First drop in the big cup (from No. 1) slightly below the surface of the ground — you don’t want any putts catching on that lip. Then put the small cup (No. 2) on top. Then insert the flagstick (No. 3) through the hole in the small cup. If you’ve sized it all correctly, it should stay in place!
Find a nice, relatively flat section in your yard (doesn’t have to be TOO flat, unless you keep your lawn stimping 12 ). Flip over your larger cup (from No. 1) and cut a hole around it using a butter knife. You can keep gouging away with that knife, if it’s all you’ve got, but if you’re lucky enough to have a small garden shovel lying around, I’d recommend it. Maybe some gloves, too, if you’re not into rocks, roots, dirt or worms.
The masterplan should be developed by a project team, which is usually led by the golf course architect and typically includes some or all of these specialisms: Your golf course architect will provide a detailed design package to reflect local planning submission requirements and ease the planning process. Land Planner.
Your golf course architect will provide a detailed design package to reflect local planning submission requirements and make the planning process easier. Your golf course architect will also assist with the preparation of an Environmental Impact Assessment should it be required.
The final stage of making their design a reality is to establish a maintenance regime with the course superintendent to create the overall course character.
Golf course design fees are dependent on a variety of factors, such as the type and scale of the project, its technical complexity, the planning approval process, the working practices of the individual golf course architect and the services and conditions imposed by clients.
Technical – is the site you are considering suitable for a golf course? A golf course architect will examine the physical elements of the site, such as land area, topography, soils, geology, vegetation, drainage and water availability.
Fees are usually calculated in one of three ways: As a percentage of the construction costs. A fixed price. A time rate. To understand more about the amount you will need to invest in engaging a golf course architect, read our advice on golf course design fees. Download:
Once the feasibility studies are complete, the Masterplan investigates how the design concept will convert into a course people are able to play on and enjoy. This is the stage when the golf course layout, including locations for the clubhouse and maintenance facilities, the playing surfaces and landscape character, location, style and size of features, e.g. lakes, streams, walls, bridges and pathways, will be prepared along with construction programmes and budgets.
After you decide on the size of the course, you need to place in the section of the yard where it won’t get in the way of other activities. For instance, putting in the driveway isn’t a good idea if you’re building a permanent golf course. On the other side, if you’re constructing a temporary mini-golf course, then it can be placed pretty much anywhere.
Decorating and maintaining a professional golf course is expansive but you can easily beautify your backyard course by planting flowers. You probably already have experience in nurturing flowerbeds; all you have to do now is reposition them across putting green.
Include all the naturally-occurring obstacles such as hillocks, trees, stones, puddles, sandboxes, groves, etc. The same goes for artificial obstacles like the water sprout or the laundry pole.
Sand is a great surface because it doesn’t require any maintenance, just replenishing. The lawn, on the other side, does come with demanding upkeep requirements. First, you need to mow the fairway and then you need to mow the green. The latter is mowed by cutting the blades to the lowest possible height.
If you own a backyard, you can turn it into a mini-golf course; at least for the time being.
If you’re lucky enough, most of the obstacles in the course won’t require any investment. The same can be true for fencing off the course, as you can recycle and repurpose old pieces of plywood. These can be salvaged from disused pieces of furniture or bought in a thrift store for next to nothing.
What you need to know, however, is that you can easily combine a verdant lawn with patches of felt.
Cut islands out of a green welcome mat or artificial turf to form the rough. Place these patches around your course to create obstacles for your players.
Illustration by Carl Wiens. Rich, Tom, and their crew of young builders made this mini- golf course from medium-density fiberboard (MDF), a stable wood composite material. It's smooth and easy to work with, and it makes a great flat surface for rolling a golf ball.
Using a drill/driver fitted with a 2¾-inch hole saw, cut a row of three holes in the center of a 12-inch square of MDF. Flip the MDF over, and glue 3¼-inch composite legs at each corner, creating a platform.
Rich and Tom covered the course with green felt and lined the golf holes with PVC pipe fittings. They came up with two great obstacles—a loop-de-loop and a ramp with redirects—to challenge even the best putters. You can add tunnels, water hazards, and ramps to your course, or just use your imagination to create different ways to enjoy hours of entertainment with your golf game.
Build the ramp by taping a flexible plastic sign to the edge of the platform. Wrap the top of the platform and the ramp in green felt, and cut out the three holes.
Who doesn't love besting Dad on the loop-de-loop hole? But it doesn't have to be just a vacation-week treat. Wouldn't it be great to have your very own course to play all year round —inside or out?
Dig around the garage for bricks, cinder blocks, wood boards, plywood sheets, buckets, strips of plastic siding — anything that can serve as a barrier, ramp or obstacle [source: Carlson ].
Inside the rectangle, place boards at 45-degree angles in the corners to create bumpers. Since the bricks and boards are easy to move, you can change the shape of the outside frame to "dogleg" to the right or left, or twist in multiple directions. If you don't have bricks and boards, a garden hose works in a pinch [source: Carlson ].
And at the Around the World mini golf course in Lake George, N.Y., each hole depicts a different country, including giant pyramid obstacles for Egypt and a tricky "Iron Curtain" blocking the Russian hole. With all those variations, it's no wonder mini golf is a beloved summer pastime for families and couples the world over.
At the Par-King miniature golf course in the suburbs of Chicago, you won't find any sad, little rotating windmills. Instead, you can putt your ball onto a conveyor belt that carries it to the top of a working miniature roller coaster built from 750 individual pieces of wood. And at the Around the World mini golf course in Lake George, N.Y., each hole depicts a different country, including giant pyramid obstacles for Egypt and a tricky "Iron Curtain" blocking the Russian hole.
Making a ramp is as easy as leaning a piece of plywood against a cinder block. You can set up two ramps face to face with a space in between, creating a jump. For added drama, place a shallow pan full of water in between them. Or attach a short run of PVC pipe to the top of each ramp and make a tunnel to safety.
To make a hole for the ball, use a 3-inch (7.6-centimeter) hole-cutting attachment on a drill, then insert a small section of 3-inch PVC pipe and insert it into the hole as a "cup" [source: This Old House ]. Glue more balusters along the top edges to create walls.
History of Mini Golf. The world's first mini golf course was the Ladies' Putting Club of St. Andrews, Scotland, formed in 1867 and still going strong. At the time, it was taboo for a woman to raise a golf club above her shoulder, so the ladies founded their own private putt-putt society [source: Emory ].