Holey Moley

It seems I have become a degenerate gambler. Another bet I made with D was on a game of mini-golf. I have been talking about getting into golf, but maybe what I meant was mini-golf, as I think it's really fun. Some of my greatest memories were playing mini-golf at Adventure Park in Geelong.

Since the Dota 2 match doesn't look like it'll be happening any time soon, D has been really talking up this game of mini-golf. We were joined by a couple of people from his team, Mr T and Daniel.

The place we went to is called Holey Moley. I was a bit dubious that there could be a mini-golf course in the middle of the CBD, but I was proven wrong. The place was built in what was formerly the nightclub called Sorry, Grandma or something like that. It is now a bar / mini-golf venue.

Since it was an after-work thing, we only played a round of 9 holes, which was in their upstairs area.

As far as little tricks go, the courses themselves weren't overly complicated. It seems like for every hole, there was a pretty straightforward path to the hole. But some of the holes did have little twists, that we didn't realise until someone told us later.

For instance, there was a Groundhog Day hole, which had little groundhogs scattered around. I thought it was complicated just because of the hills, but one of the rules was that if you hit a groundhog, you'd have to start the hole again from the start (retaining your current score though).

There was a Pac-Man themed hole:

And the last hole we played was interesting. You started with a pinball machine (which didn't seem to contribute anything to your score). Once you got the ball through the hole in the middle, it would roll out onto a foosball table, which you had to use to play against one of your opponents. If you lost, you'd get one stroke added, if you won, you'd lose a stroke from your score. And not pictured in my photo, once you were done with foosball, you had to hit your ball into one of the pockets of a pool table (which had pool cues and the triangle thing as obstacles). The point values of the different pockets varied from -3 to +3.

Despite my Asian maths racial, I got my ass handed to me pretty badly.

The night was pretty fun. I think Mr. T has a bit of a soft spot for me, from when I was a grad, because he was trying to help me win. He would try to let me get some practice shots in while nobody was looking, and tried to get extra strokes added to D's score (I wouldn't let him in the end). Daniel was pretty encouraging, too. But even all that wasn't enough to help me win, so I lost the bet. I did manage to beat D at foosball though!

I should add that even though it doesn't look like it in my photos, the place was packed. You had to keep the courses themselves clear, which meant when you were waiting between holes, there was only a very small area to stand. The bar was really crowded as well. As far as drinking venues go, I think it's a nice twist. My opponents had had a few drinks before we started, so they were quite jolly the whole time. I still haven't recovered from my last drinking adventure, so I decided to give it a miss this time.