THE GOLF TEE:
FAMILY FUN-TASTIC
ADDS MINIATURE GOLF

     A new member joined The Golf Tee family of attractions Memorial Day weekend. An 18-hole Miniature Golf course completes the "Family Fun-tastic" experience at The Golf Tee in Webster.

     In 1994, owner Rick Woodson and his partners opened a driving range and batting cages at 1039 Ridge Road. The next year, Bruster's Old Fashioned Ice Cream started serving from its corner site on the same property. Then Diamond Delights Bakery opened next door, and the Family Fun-tastic package was almost complete.

     Thursday, May 24, the miniature golf course with a "small town USA" theme opened to the public. Nestled between the batting cages and Bruster's, mini golf is open noon to 11 p.m. daily. Adults play for $5 each, children 3-12 $3.50.


     The Golf Tee's miniature golf course is the only one within a seven-mile radius, and the only Webster facility to feature batting cages and golf practice as well. Birthday party packages are available, plus discounts for daytime group visits by daycare centers, scout troops, summer camps and senior centers.

     As the season progresses, special promotions among The Golf Tee, Bruster's and Diamond Delights are planned. Hawaiian Night provides discounts for appropriately dressed customers. Fabulous Forties events bring back the 10 cents-per-round price of decades past.

     Neighborhood themes, featuring Webster, Penfield and Irondequoit people and places, are planned. The first step is a large garden within the mini golf course that was designed after the collection at the Webster Arboretum.

     The Golf Tee: Family Fun-tastic is 15 minutes from anywhere - a half mile south of Route 104 between Holt and Hard Roads. The driving range and batting cages are open 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. weekdays, 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. on the weekend.

Have your next birthday party at The Golf Tee!








The History of Miniature Golf

Everyone knows that Abner Doubleday invented baseball and Dr. James Naismith came up with basketball, but how did miniature golf come to pass? As The Golf Tee: Family Fun-tastic prepared to open its new miniature golf course in Webster, we looked nearly 100 years back to find its roots. According to GOLF Magazine's Encyclopedia of Golf, mini golf dates back to 1916, when James Barber of Pinehurst, NC built a miniaturized version of a golf course on his estate. He mimicked the features of a regular golf course with little sand traps and small pools of water.

On a cotton plantation in Mexico, an Englishman named Thomas Fairbairn was trying to do the same thing. He couldn't get the right type of grass to grow for his miniature golf course, and ended up inventing an artificial putting surface made of cottonseed hulls and oil. Around the same time, on Lookout Mountain on the border of Georgia and Tennessee, Garnet Carter built a mini golf course at his resort hotel and patented it "Tom Thumb Golf." Carter's holes incorporated a variety of obstacles and hazards made out of tin pipes and artificial grass. Quickly, the mini golf craze spread throughout the country.

By the end of the Great Depression, 30,000 miniature golf courses dotted the countryside. For a dime or so, millions of golfers navigated through the windmills, teepees and clowns that became part of the miniature golf experience. Miniature golf survives and flourishes. On the professional mini golf circuit, thousands of players around the world participate in weekend tournaments. But most folks just putt a few on a warm summer night. At the Golf Tee, 1039 Ridge Road, Webster.