Goofy Golf

Did you ever wonder just where and how the tradition began to make miniature golf courses double as Outsider Art sculpture gardens? No? Well, here's the answer anyway: it all started with Florida's Lee Koplin, who came from California to help make the Sunshine State a little kookier.

Miniature golf had been mildly popular in America since at least the 1920s, but it was Koplin who took the game one step beyond into the land of kitsch forevermore. It all started with a giant sphinx he'd dragged onto the course for decoration. He looked upon his works and saw that it was good. Next thing you know, he's got a giant monkey out there. And a dinosaur. And when someone offered him a giant imitation Easter Island head, how could he say no? Soon the decorations had become half the attraction. And something started happening that had rarely ever happened on a golf course, miniature or otherwise, before: people took pictures. And more pictures. And bought postcards with still more pictures. Koplin had, in his visceral and tacky style, found a way to make the world's most boring game interesting and the world was never the same again.

Before long, every other putt-putt and Tom Thumb golf place on Earth was emulating Koplin. Dinosaur Golf, Hillbilly Golf, Monster Golf, even Biblical Golf. Even courses like Pee Wee Golf in California, which Koplin and his brother had founded in 1948, reinvented itself with statues of ghosts and gorillas and sea monsters. In its heyday, Goofy Golf had many locations in many cities. Most are gone now, but their statues still turn up when you least expect - such as the big orange ex-Goofy Golf dinosaur who's now found employment outside a hippie smokeshop in Jacksonville or the Easter Island head that can today be seen at St. Pete Beach's Polynesian Putter.

Goofy Golf is still in the family - the original Panama City location is currently owned by Lee Koplin’s daughter Michelle. Find it at 12206 Front Beach Road, Panama City, FL. You can also scope it out on Google Maps here.

Punta Gorda Golfball Rain

September 1, 1969.

A heavy downpour rains down on the Punta Gorda area, but when the clouds clear, the gutters are not only flowing with water but also golfballs. A team of at least four police officers started gathering the balls up and apparently made off with a sizeable haul before getting tired and giving up.

But where did all these golfballs come from? As far as I know, they never solved the mystery. Inquiries at local golf courses seemed to indicate that no one was missing large quantities of balls.

Smoke City Dinosaur

Today while making my ramblin' rounds up and down Beach Boulevard, I stopped into Smoke City, one of the area's cigar sources I hadn't checked out yet. (And in case you care, the place was great - although their cigar selection was small compared to their layout of glass pipes, hookah materials, and god-awful bric-a-brac like E-cigarettes, I was quite pleased with their offerings. Not to mention the smiling barefoot hippie girl who waited on me.)

There was a big orange dinosaur with electric glowing eyes standing out front, so I chatted him up and made small talk, as I am wont to do with big orange dinosaurs. He's the last man standing from when the patch of land under this strip-mall was Goofy Golf, a miniature golf course where this erzatz T-Rex ruled the roost in his grand productive days.

Polynesian Putter

Someday when the giant radioactive cockroaches that inherit the Earth look back on what the mammals achieved, I'd like to think that they'll smile (or whatever it is they do with their insectoid faces to express pleasure) at the idea that mankind, at the pinnacle of its culture, merged Tiki culture with miniature golf.

Polynesian Putter is located at 4999 Gulf Boulevard, St. Pete Beach, FL. When I took these photos last Spring it still defied the odds by surviving into the age where its own half-century-past zeitgeist is now seen on Mad Men by a generation who never knew - and still don't - what it was all about. But hurry if you wanna get puttery wit' it, because everything awesome from the past eventually gets torn down to build a bank or a gas station sooner or later.

The Polynesian Putter is actually part of the Sea Palms Motel complex, but you need not be a resident to play the putt-putt. My favorite aspect of the whole course is, of course (heh), the 30-foot large Moai statue which can be putted through. It also has a staircase inside it which allows courageous seekers to climb to the top and get a nice view surveying the entire course.

The Moai were carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island between the years 1250 and 1500 and were reportedly intended to symbolize their deified ancestors. I wonder what the specific ancestor they modeled their copy after thinks about being celebrated centuries later on a roadside tourist attraction?

The place is densely wooded, but you can just barely make it out through the foliage on Google Maps here.