by OOur passion for mini golf began after playing a friendly round with Richard’s brother in 2006. We were traveling from our home in Stockport to visit my family in the seaside town of Felixstowe and someone suggested a game. Richard managed a hole-in-one, which earned him a free game.
We started talking about how many mini golf courses there are in the UK – we looked and found there are more than 600. We had just bought our first car and decided it would be a fun way to visit them all and see the country.
Now, almost 20 years later, we’ve visited 1,064 mini golf courses around the world – just over a thousand of which are in the UK. In 2015 we drove along the south coast from Swanage to Taunton and visited 62 golf courses in two weeks. We both have bad backs now, which we attribute to how much we drive. We once got stuck on a cliff in a storm while trying to hike 200 meters up the Great Orme headland in Llandudno to play the course at the top. Surprisingly the course was still open and we played a pretty windy round.
Richard holds the Guinness World Record for most mini golf courses visited – 902 when it was awarded in 2022, having traveled a handful more than me. Together we have attended courses in 12 other countries, including New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Chile. The European degree programs are all standardized. They follow one of three patterns and are significantly less “crazy” than the UK courses. On the other hand, the American golf courses, where almost every one is decorated with dinosaurs and pirate ships, are completely exaggerated.
Crazy golf has always been in our blood. As children, we both played on family vacations; Richard even has an old photo of his mother playing in Blackpool when she was pregnant with him. Every course is different and you really have to think about how you play each hole. It forces you to escape reality for half an hour.
We both have our favorite spots and holes. Mine is a council run course in Lyme Regis that looks exactly as it did in the 1970s. It’s a simple outdoor course with lots of lumps and bumps, no fancy gadgets, and stunning ocean views. Richard prefers the modern courses – there’s a fantastic Indiana Jones-style hole in Hemsby, Norfolk, with skulls on spikes over a snake pit, which he loves.
It didn’t take long for us to realize we were competitive and we have been playing both individually and collectively as part of the Great Britain Mini Golf team in the UK and around the world. I have won the women’s World Adventure Golf title twice and hold the British women’s record – Completing an 18-hole course with 12 holes in one shot and six holes in two shots. Many players go to great lengths to import specialty balls and putters, but we try not to take it too seriously.
after newsletter advertising
But we can become competitive with each other. There were some frosty car rides home after a game. Richard is a bad loser, but an even worse winner. On the way home he will be happy and insist that I buy him a congratulatory ice cream.
We are lucky to have a common hobby that brings us together. People talk about “golf widows” when describing the loss of a partner to the sport, but mini golf helps us spend more time together. We were never interested in playing “big golf” – not everyone wants to spend four hours on a green.
When we first started touring mini golf courses, many of our friends found it a bit strange. But in recent years the popularity of adventure golf has exploded, and now people are keen to tell us about their own experiences playing it. Many of our friends now send us pictures of courses they took on vacation.
The World Minigolf Sport Federation is trying to get minigolf into the Olympics. If it works, we would like to try it. It would be a dream come true for both of us to win Olympic gold in mini golf.
As Heather Main tells it
Do you have an experience you would like to share? Email experience@theguardian.com
