Arghhhh! Crazy golf

Hastings Adventure Golf, already the UK’s acknowledged centre for miniature golf and the home for the annual World Crazy Golf Championships, is well on course for an Easter opening of a third Adventure Golf course – ‘Pirate Golf’.

The course represents a further investment in Hastings of just over £500,000 by this family business who have been trading on the site since 1983. It brings the total number of top-of-the-line courses in Hastings to three, - 54 holes of craziness in all.

Adventure Golf in the UK has become quite a phenomenon over the last few years, with major complexes being constructed in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Dunfermline, Belfast, Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol, to name but a few – and all of these were designed and built from Hastings.

These courses are a major departure from the original seaside ‘Crazy Golf’ concept, popular for decades in seaside resorts up and down the UK. Many of the new Adventure Golf courses represent 7-figure investments by their owners and feature state-of-the-art special effects and electronics. No longer is it just ‘Beat the Windmill’!

The Hastings team effectively have two businesses. One is their own highly successful complex on the seafront in Hastings Old Town, their pride and joy of course being their new showpiece ‘Pirate Golf’. The other side of what they do is working with Castle Golf in the USA  designing and building for others, not just in the UK but across Europe. So this south coast, seaside town has become Europe’s driving force for miniature golf and most customers, as they putt their ball past the windmill or the spitting, talking Tikki poles (truly) are totally unaware that modest Hastings is at the centre of a major leisure phenomenon.

David Hartley, the Company Manager, explained… ‘Adventure Golf in the USA has been a major leisure facility for decades but in the UK was slow to take-off, due to the high costs involved. We led the way in 2003 with our own tropical-themed course and we worked closely with Castle Golf from the States, market leaders that side of the pond, to develop our course and all the fountains and waterfall features it contains. Later, we started building courses oo and that side of the business has really taken off. We’ve designed courses as far afield as Croatia and Cyprus’.

‘But our spiritual home is Hastings and when we design courses for ourselves, we naturally want the very best, not just to keep our local business buoyant and successful but as a showpiece to the world as to what we can achieve’.

The new Pirate Golf course is certainly a showpiece. Set right on the promenade in Hastings Old Town, as players make their way around the course, the main event is a set-piece battle between two pirate ships, with cannon fire, explosions, and splashes as the cannonballs land perilously close to the players and spray water all over them. Further on, there is even a giant skull that has a nasty habit of eating your golf ball. The whole course (indeed, all the courses in Hastings) are lit by floodlights and stay open to a remarkably late 10.30pm throughout the summer.

It would appear that the Hastings team are going to have a big hit on their hands. Already, the World Minigolf Federation, the international body regulating the sport of Minigolf, have chosen Hastings for the World Adventure Golf Masters tournament. This May, top players from across the world will descend on Hastings to try their luck and skill against the new course. How these chaps will take to having their golf ball eaten by a giant skull, remains, of course, to be seen!

Eastbourne's Treasure Island attraction and pirate crazy golf course was reported to have closed in local press recently.