Hole #5 - Return To Sender

This hole might be the most unique mini-golf concept on the course.  You putt away from the hole and into one of those electric golf ball return mechanisms (the kind you might have used to practice putting in your living room or office so you wouldn't have to walk over to retrieve the balls). 

You putt at a slight angle down a little slope into the returner which then shoots your ball back up the slope, over a narrow bridge and toward the hole.  If you hit the ball too hard, it will likely bounce out of the hard plastic returner, leaving you the choice of tapping your next shot into the mechanism or turning around and shooting directly at the hole.  In general, a soft shot that enters the returner towards the middle has the best chance of making a hole-in-one.

If you tend to be a contrarian and want to avoid the ball return completely you can try turning around and bouncing your ball over a border and onto the green.  You might even get a hole-in-one that way by banking your shot of the foot of a metal gnome, which stands guard over the hole.  This approach to the hole is not recommended.

The green itself is very small, again usually leaving a tap-in if your ball doesn't go in.

#5 - View from green with ball on the tee.	Hole #5 Green

Hole #5 - Ball Returner.	Hole #5 - Entire hole.

Hole Development

This concept started when I was going through boxes in the garage and found this ball returner that had lived in my bedroom or various offices over the decades.  When I found it, I immediately wanted to incorporate it in a hole.

My original idea for a hole using the ball returner was to tee off from behind the green and up a ramp that went over green.  Your ball would have to be hit hard enough to fly over the green and onto a second ramp that went down to the returner.  The problem with that was the ball would have too much speed and would bounce out of (or over) the returner. 

The problem to solve was that wherever you teed off from had to be out of the way of where the returner would shoot the ball back, so I came up with the current design where you tee off to the right or left of the return path of the ball.

How It Was Built

The device had to be attached pretty securely to the plywood so it wouldn't get out of alignment when it shoots balls towards the hole.  I used the ubiquitous corner braces to hold it in place.  Since the device requires electricity, it had to be located inside the porch and somewhat close to the electrical outlet.  I wound up running an extension cord along the wall and inside cord hiders so the cord wouldn't be a trip hazard and would be less noticeable.

I noticed that, since the returner is made of hard plastic, a putt has a tendency to bounce out--especially if it is hit too hard.  To "soften" this effect I added some white duct tape to the area where the ball hits and some rubber tubing around the top edge to hopefully keep the balls from bouncing out too much.

The green is comprised of a piece of plywood nailed on top of an old wooden pallet with the hole resting one of the slats on the bottom of the pallet.  This was my first idea as to how to build greens for this course.  Luckily, my brother had a small stockpile of old pallets I could use—he even cut this one down to the size I wanted.

One tricky part of maintaining this hole is keeping the ball returner aligned with the hole.  Since the part of the fairway that contains the returner sits on a plastic rug on top of cool-deck, it could slide around a little bit.  So I periodically check it to make sure a good tee shot to the middle of the returner has a good chance of producing a hole-in-one.

The metal gnome that stands next to the hole was given to us by my wife's friend.  I couldn't come up with a good use for it right off, so I just stuck him on this green.  As mentioned in the hole description, you have the option of trying to bank your tee shot of the gnome's foot to get a hole-in-one.