88 years since the first National Tom Thumb Golf Championship took place

Celebrating 88 years since the first National Tom Thumb Championship was contested in Chattanooga.

Garnet Carter created the first artificial miniature golf course in the USA in 1926. The first of the 'Tom Thumb Golf' brand of miniature golf course was an 18-hole layout located near Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

By 1930 there were some 25,000 miniature golf courses in the USA, 3,000 of which were the now patented Tom Thumb course franchises.

The course and fantasy theming soon caught the imagination of visitors and on the 23rd October 1930 the final of the first-ever National Tom Thumb Championship took place.

Qualifying events had taken place in all of the then 48 states of the USA, with 200 players representing 30 states in the grand final. The event had a total cash fund of $10,000, with the champion winning $2,000!

We haven't played a Tom Thumb Golf course on our travels, but we do have some nice old postcards of Tom Thumb courses in our collection. This one is of a course at Westende Bains in Belgium

Today hundreds of tournaments take place around the world and the game is experiencing a real boom.

Check out the Crazy Golf Museum website for more details of minigolf history.