Hole #6 - Round And Round

This hole includes another mini-golf staple--the loop-the-loop.  Your tee shot must be hit hard and straight enough to get through the narrow-tracked loop.  Once through the loop, your ball splashes through a small puddle, crashes through a finish gate with a checkered flag, goes over a little speed hump and rolls towards the green.  Beyond the gate, there are barriers on each side which help guide the ball directly towards the hole.

If your ball fails to get through the loop on the first shot, you have the option to move up to a second tee area closer to the loop for your second shot.  If the second shot doesn't make it either, you can move up yet again to a tee just in front of the loop.  If you need more tries to get through you can continue to play from the closest tee (or anywhere you like).

Unlike some typical miniature golf loop-the-loop holes, you cannot play around this loop.  To the right of the loop is a concrete elf and blocking the opening in the middle of the loop is peacock "art piece" made of metal scraps.  Both of these creatures are positioned to reject attempts to circumvent the loop.

This is a hole where you can get a hole-in-one if you get your tee shot into and through the loop, but, if you don't, there's also no limit on how many shots it could take you to finish.

Hole #6 Tee	Hole #6 - The loop guarded by an elf and a peacock.

#6 - Fairway running up to the green.

Hole Development

Like the windmill hole, it feels like every mini-golf course should have a loop-the-loop hole.  I was initially thinking I would need to do something like get some sheet metal and bend it into the loop.  Then, when I bought some plastic landscape borders at Home Depot for another project, I noticed they came curled into a circle.  I wondered if you could leave a piece in a loop, secure the ends down and hit a golf ball with enough centrifugal force to travel through the loop.  Turns out you pretty much can.

My version of the loop hole also has elements inspired by Hot Wheels sets I used to play with as a kid.

When I got the initial hole put together, I found a potentially critical flaw.  When you hit the ball hard enough to get through the loop, it was moving too fast to go in the hole.  In fact, when I was testing it, one shot hit the middle of the hole and ricocheted back into the pool. 

The obvious fix would have been to just extend the distance between the loop and the green, but the hole wouldn't really fit where I wanted to put it with a longer fairway.  Next, I tried adding padded tape to the inside of the hole, but that didn't do much--especially for shots that just flew right over the hole anyway.  I also tried flagsticks made of bamboo, metal or plastic but these didn't help either.  Ultimately, I left the padding in the hole and now have a plastic flagstick even though they didn't solve the speed problem.

After it had rained, I noticed that water collected into a puddle at the bottom of the exit of the loop.  At first, I thought this would be a problem to fix, but when I tried putting with the water still there, the ball slowed considerably, even enough to allow for some holes-in-one.  So what started as "bug" to be fixed turned into a feature of the hole.  Now, even if there has been no rain, the puddle is created prior to play.

While the puddle slowed the ball some, it was still coming through the loop with too much speed.  I decided to try adding a "finish gate" with a checkered flag pattern--like some Hot Wheels sets used to have--to slow the ball further.

Next, I noticed that the sun beating down on the flat parts of the plastic landscape border--the parts entering and exiting the loop--caused it to become a little misshapen and bumpy so I added carpeting to these areas.  In addition to smoothing the surface out, the carpet also slowed down shots a little bit more.  Adding the carpet also allowed for the creation of a little "speed hump" as a final element to slow shots down before they hit the green.

With all the "calming" mechanisms in place, shots were now slowed down enough to get to the hole at a slow enough pace, however, because balls would still tend to bounce around erratically coming off the loop, I thought it was still too hard to get holes in one.  For that reason, I added barriers to help keep shots on track towards the hole.

How It Was Built

The landscape borders have a tubular "ridge" on the top end where you would connect border pieces together.  This ridge seemed high enough to contain the ball in the loop.  For the other side (that would normally go into the ground) which just has a little folded edge, I needed to add pipe insulation as a border to keep the ball from flying out of the loop. 

The loop is anchored to the boards with screws and staples.  The start of the loop is on one board with the other end on the connected board.  To add stability to the loop, I added a vertical brace made of a small piece of wood screwed to the fairway with corner braces.  The brace is located in the middle of the loop, leaning against the top of the loop.  Initially, the brace was connected to the edge of the loop.  However, I found that, when the loop was "stiffer," it didn't allow the moving ball to dissipate as much kinetic energy (I learned that term from watching "Battlebots") so it actually added to the speed of the ball through the loop (which I didn't want) and generally made holes-in-one less likely. 

The carpet on the flat entry and exit of the loop is simply stapled down, as it is on the plywood.  The "speed hump" was created by putting a semi-circular piece of plastic under the carpet.

The finish gate was created by hanging another piece of landscaping border from a wire held up by a couple more corner braces.

The tee and fairway boards are connected to each other using mending plates, as usual. 

The barriers that direct balls towards the hold are, yet again, pieces of pipe insulation stapled to the plywood.

The metal peacock and concrete elf that prevent balls from sneaking past the loop are decorative pieces that were relocated from other parts of the porch.  My wife was ready to throw out the years-old, rust-filled peacock which, as I mentioned earlier, is an artsy piece made of scrap metal.  Never one to want to throw things out, I got out the rust reformer, leftover paint and super glue and refurbished it--then repurposed it as a golf shot blocker.

This green was the actually the first of three that were built on top of wooden pallets (as described in hole #5).