Over the year there have been many weird and wonderful things that have happened either on a golf course or to golfers in general. Some of these are fantastic, others tragic and some are just down right unbelievable...

For example, there are corroborated stories of one man hitting five – count them…five – holes in one in the space of seven days. There are no reports that he won the lottery that week but I bet he sat there with his ticket watching the numbers come out with more than a little hope in his heart!

In another example of the strange world of golf there was a report of a police chase that did not quite go the way of the boys in blue. The person they were chasing was only driving a golf buggy but little did the cops know that his cart had been ever so slightly modified with a huge engine capable of propelling the cart to speeds in excess of those achievable by the police car. I would have loved to have watched that one.

Golf carts can be dangerous things. I was once on a stag weekend at a golf course in Gloucestershire when a couple of the guys we were with managed to roll the cart down the hill. Admittedly they were trying to climb up a hole called Cardiac Hill with too many golf bags and at least one of our playing partners hanging on the back of the cart. I think we managed to get the buggy back without the course authorities noticing!

There is one hole that you definitely do not need a golf buggy for. In fact, a speed boat might be a better option! For a $1 million challenge the RCB built a full sized green on a barge and floated it out 165 yards into Toronto harbour. Players drove off from an artificial tee on the side of the harbour and tried to land their ball as close to the pin on the floating green!

At least that green survived. Reports of a green keeper's mistake came through when he used a mixture of chemicals on his greens to try and make them better. Unfortunately one of the chemicals was a herbicide and it killed all the grass. Mud golf anyone? Alternatively take up the growing sport of snow golf. Orange balls all round!

If you would rather stick with white golf balls you may want to locate cheap ones. If you do, check your dog! Reports of thirteen balls being removed from a dog's stomach abound. Others taken from a snake’s stomach raised a considerable amount of money when they were auctioned on EBay in Australia. The game of Golf Cross does not even use round balls. Check this out on-line and marvel at the things you can do with a strange shaped ball!

Finally, do away with clubs and balls completely and take up Frisbee golf!!!

There is no real way to qualify the greatest putt of all time. You could go for the longest putt ever noted or the one achieved under the most difficult circumstances.

The longest ever televised putt is generally credited to someone who is not even a golf professional! During a televised pro-am tournament in 1980, Terry Wogan (he of Children in Need fame), holed a putt at Gleneagles. If you want to see it for yourself, follow this link to the YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAWcjGsMXGQ

Other great putts can be those made when under the most pressure. Anyone trying to putt for a major title could comment on what this feels like. Tiger Woods has made many of these putts, so has Seve, Nick Faldo, Lee Trevino and so on.

I guess it depends on what your favourite Major is as to what you might think is the greatest putt ever. Who can forget Darren Clarke at the Ryder Cup or Nick Faldo at the US Masters, or Tiger Woods at the US Open:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx2BS1u4fiw

Other putts can be great because the golfer was fighting against the elements. You only have to watch the golf crazy film Caddyshack to see Bishop Pickering (Henry Wilcoxon) playing in atrocious weather but still managing to hole putts left, right and centre!

Some great putts are not really putts at all. Am I the only one who remembers an interview that Steve Rider did with the all time great Severiano Ballesteros? Steve Rider was talking about putting and Seve, on his home course, put his putter in front of the ball, raised the putter backwards, so lifting the ball on the back of it, raised it right round over his head before letting the ball go towards the hole - where it promptly fell in the cup!

If you are an “arm chair golfer” any of the above may rank in your list of the greatest putts ever. If, on the other hand, you are one of those brave souls that walk out on a golf course with any regularity then surely the greatest putt you have ever seen is one of your own! We all have fond memories of those putts we have made that we never thought possible. The ones that our playing partners reacted to with either incredulity, shock or slaps on our backs - a resounding “well done”.

The greatest putt ever…….awaits us on our next round of golf.

It is a matter of taste which activity one wants to call "minigolf" rather than "golf", but probably the best candidate as the "first minigolf course in the world" is the Ladies' Putting Club of St. Andrews in Scotland, which was founded in 1867, and still today is operating and open for public. This 18-hole course of putting greens, called "the Himalayas", was founded by some members of the notable Royal & Ancient Golf Club in St. Andrews. Women had become interested in golf game, but the conservative social norms of the era deemed it unacceptable for women to publicly perform such violent movements that a golf swing requires. Therefore an 18-hole course of short putting greens was constructed for women – apparently the first "miniature golf course" in the world.

A few decades later it became customary for many American and British hotels to offer their guests a miniature-sized golf course, using the same designs as actual golf courses, but at one tenth the scale. The game was played with a golf putter and a short driver, and was called "garden golf", "pitch and putt golf", "clock golf" or "par 3 golf".

Geometrically-shaped minigolf courses made of fake materials began to emerge during the early 20th century. The earliest documented mention of such a course is in the 8 June 1912 edition of The Illustrated London News, which introduces a minigolf course called Gofstacle.

The first standardized minigolf courses to enter commercial mass-production were the Thistle Dhu ("This'll Do") course 1916 in Pinehurst, North Carolina, and the 1927 Tom Thumb patent of Garnet Carter from Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. Thomas McCulloch Fairbairn, a golf fanatic, revolutionized the game in 1922 with his formulation of a suitable artificial green—a mixture of cottonseed hulls, sand, oil, and dye. With this discovery, miniature golf became accessible everywhere; by the late 1920s there were over 150 rooftop courses in New York City alone, and tens of thousands across the United States. This American minigolf boom of early 20th century came to an end during the economic depression in the late 1930s. Nearly all minigolf courses in the United States were closed and demolished before the end of 1930s.

One of the first documented minigolf courses in mainland Europe was built in 1926 by Fr. Schröder in Hamburg, Germany. Mr. Schröder had been inspired by his visit to the United States, where he had seen minigolf courses spreading across the country.

In 1930 the gentlemen Edwin O. Norrman and Eskil Norman returned to Sweden from the United States, where they had stayed for several years and witnessed the golden days of the American minigolf boom. In 1931 they founded a company "Norman och Norrmans Miniatyrgolf", and began manufacturing standardized minigolf courses for the Swedish market. During the following years they spread this new leisure activity across Sweden, by installing minigolf courses in public parks and other suitable locations.

Swedish minigolf courses typically had a rectangular wooden frame surrounding the playing area made of tennis field sand (while the American manufacturers used newly-developed and patented felt as the surface of their minigolf courses). Felt did not become popular as a surface material in Sweden until in the mid-1960s – but since then it has become practically the only surface material used in Scandinavia and Britain, due to its favourable playing qualities in wet weather. (Minigolf courses with a felt surface can be played also in rainy weather, because water is absorbed through the felt into the ground. The other commonly used surface materials, beton and eternite, cannot be used in rainy weather, because the rainwater collects into large pools on them, stopping the ball from rolling.)

The Swedish Minigolf Federation (Svenska Bangolfförbundet) was founded in 1937, being the oldest minigolf sport organization in the world. National Swedish championships in minigolf have been played yearly since 1939. In other countries minigolf sport federations were not founded until the late 1950s, due to the post-war economical depression.

All competitions approved by World Minigolfsport Federation are played on standardized courses, whose design has been checked to be suitable for competitive play. The WMF currently approves four different course types:

   * beton (abbreviated B, sometimes called "Bongni", "Minigolf" or "Abteilung 1")
   * eternite (abbreviated E (in Sweden EB), sometimes called "Europabana", "Miniaturgolf" or "Abteilung
      2"),
   * felt (abbreviated F or SFR, sometimes called "Swedish felt runs"), and
   * Minigolf Open System (abbreviated "O", "OS" or "MOS"). The latter non-standardized playing system,
      MOS, covers all minigolf courses that the three standardized systems (B, E, F) do not cover.

The world record on one round of minigolf is 18 strokes on 18 holes. More than a thousand players have officially achieved this score on eternite. On other playing systems a perfect round of 18 hole-in-ones is extremely rare, and has never been scored in an official national or international tournament. Unofficial 18-rounds on beton and felt courses have been reported in Sweden.

In addition to classical outdoor miniature golf, indoor "glow in the dark" miniature golf has achieved some popularity, especially in colder climates like Canada and Finland. It can be played throughout the year, and climate control allows building elaborate obstacles that would not withstand inclement weather. There are also a variety of portable miniature golf fairways or 'tracks'. that can be set up as temporary courses indoors or outdoors. The fairways are usually constructed of wooden or fibre-glass frames. Portable fairways are often used for summer festivals and fairs, corporate events, team-building events and product launches.