Wee Golf

Historic is Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, with one foot in Tennessee and one in Georgia. Here the Union soldiers tumbled the greycoats into retreat in the Battle Above the Clouds; here, last year, shrewd Garnet Carter, owner of Fairyland Club, built the first Tom Thumb golf course, complicating an ordinary 18-hole putting course with ingenious hazards. Last week to Fairyland went putters from many corners of the U. S. to roll balls through hollows, to carom them from banks, down tunnels, over dishpan water hazards and around basket-size sand-traps in the first national Tom Thumb championship.*

Some putters from Jacksonville, Fla. were smartest. They came two weeks before the tournament started and putted round and round the Fairyland course, where every hole is named for a fairy story with little statues of the characters --gnomes, animals, little people--as hazards, direction posts, decoration. By long practice the people from Jacksonville learned to play Cinderella, to kill Red Riding Hood, to fool Little Miss Muffet. Of course, Chattanooga putters had practiced on the course a lot too, but they were rattled by competition with the outland contestants. Impulsive Chinese Grace Moy of Brooklyn arrived in her car late one evening and went right out to play. She was up early in the morning to play some more. Her scores were bad. She said: "If I don't break par this round I'll jump in the goldfish pool." She did not break par. She did not jump in the bowl.

A great crowd followed Ernest Fossa, 14, champion Tom Thumber of Massachusetts. Fossa hurried his shots, took sixes on the last two holes.

Midget Cigarsalesman Herbert Barnett (32 yrs., 50 lb., 30 in.) did not have his own clubs with him. He had to play around with a 35-in. putter, did badly. He said: "What could you expect? The only full-size article I use is a Meditation Cigar."

In the end. the smart Jacksonvillains triumphed. After four 18-hole rounds (par, 56) blond J. K. Scott who says he scores from 75 to 80 on real golf courses won the $2.000 first prize for men with 223. Mrs. J. E. Rankin who won the $2,000 for the best lady was from Jacksonville too. Her score was 241. Putter Newton Coggins from Jacksonville and Mrs. R. L. Stone of Chattanooga were runners-up.

Garnet Carter has part interest in patent rights on the use of cottonseed hulls or other "comminuted flocculent vegetable material" as putting greens (TIME, July 14; Aug. n). His patents on hollow-log and other hazards are still pending. A great rival--Miniature Golf Courses of America Inc.--had sprung up to compete with his Tom Thumb Golf. Wisely they compromised on the market: to Miniature Golf, the indoor courses; to Tom Thumb the open spaces. Latest Department of Commerce figures for this fast-growing U. S. business put the total investment at $325,000,000 for 30,000 courses.

There are 60 courses in England; 200 more planned. Recently one was opened in London's famed Kit-Cat Restaurant. When the Prince of Wales went to visit Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians at Brussels he spent most of his time on the Queen's course. At home, he announced he would set up a course in the courtyard of St. James's Palace. In the U. S. famed private courses are those of Drygoods Tycoon Percy Straus at Port Chester, N. Y. and Mrs. Graham Fair Vanderbilt at Manhasset, L. I. On busy days over 2,800 people putt around the two elaborate courses behind the Roxy Theatre, Manhattan. In Hollywood, Mary Pickford has the most expensive one in the world. Nobody knows how much it cost. Last week bandits plundered $75 from Miss Pickford's greens fee booth. Richard Barthelmess and Jackie Coogan have their own. Guy Lombardo, jazzbo, has a course on which every hole is made up of discarded musical instruments.

As midget golf has grown, hazards have become wilder. At the third green of the Los Angeles Miniature Golf Course a bear is chained between white pillars in front of a replica of the White House. He is trained to try to catch the ball as it rolls past. Miniature Golf Courses of America, Inc. have made replicas of Yellowstone Park, Puget Sound, Horseshoe Curve, the Grand Canyon and put up signs saying: "See the U. S. with a putter." Next plan of the manufacturers is to sell the idea of seeing the world with a putter, and reproducing things like the Eiffel Tower, Wall of China, Taj Mahal. Carnie Gouldie Manufacturing Co. puts out a 4-ft. lighthouse. If the ball goes through the lighthouse the light flickers.

Miniature Golf has its own magazine--Miniature Golf Course News, 50-c- the copy. The editors say that $125,000 will be spent in the next year on new courses. Municipal and State governments are working on ways to tax course operators. In Manhattan statutes have been proposed whereby no course in a backyard may be opened to the public, none are allowed in residential districts, hours for play are limited from 8 a. m. to midnight, no course can be built too close to a school for fear of distracting children from their lessons, all courses must buy a license for $50.

*This week in Chicago will be played a national open miniature golf championship with $10,000 in prizes

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