Our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour began 14 years ago today!

We played the Victory Trail course at Treasure Island Adventure Golf in Southsea, Hampshire on this day in 2006. At the end of our round on Saturday 30th September we won a free game card by firing the cannon on the lucky last hole.

Our minigolfing adventures have been rolling ever since!

We've now been to 956 courses - 917 in the British Isles and 39 overseas.

The growth of minigolf
When our travels began in 2006 there were around 600 courses in the UK.

Minigolf has grown in popularity and has moved from being a traditional outdoor seaside summer activity to become a year-round game that can be played indoors, outdoors and at pretty much any time of the day.

A number of new courses have come and gone during the last decade and we have been to a number of pop-up courses too. There are still new courses being planned, developed, built and opened.

When we first set out to visit all the courses in the country there were only two indoor courses, one in Felixstowe and one in Great Yarmouth. Both are still open and have been joined by around 100 other indoor minigolf venues!

Hitting 900
We visited our 900th course overall when we played the North Bay Mini Golf course in Scarborough, North Yorkshire in June 2019.

We visited our 900th course in the UK when we played the indoor Pirates Cove Adventure Golf course at the New York Thunderbowl in Kettering, Northamptonshire last December.

The original 600
Before the coronavirus pandemic we were closing in on visiting the final 40 courses of the original 600 we set out to play in 2006. We're also very close to hitting 1,000 course visits overall.

We had a very strong start to the year and visited 20 courses in the first 20 days of 2020.

We've been to a total of 46 courses this year. Fifteen of those are new courses added to our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour total and eight of them have been visited in the time of coronavirus.

Course visits by year
In 2019 we went to 82 courses.
In 2018 we visited 64 courses.
In 2017 we went to 74 courses.
In 2016 we visited 47 courses.
In 2015 we went to 84 courses.

Next year...
It'll be interesting to see whether we'll be able to get down to Southsea to celebrate the 15th anniversary of our minigolfing tour next year.

Richard Gottfried is the author of The Minigolfer's Guide to Marketing and Curator of the Crazy Golf Museum. He blogs about minigolf at The Ham and Egger Files.

The views expressed in this blog are solely the views of the writer and do not represent the World Minigolf Sport Federation (WMF), Minigolfnews.com or any other organization that the writer may be associated with unless expressly stated in the blog.