Hole #9 - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

The L-shaped finishing hole requires a bit of geometry--or maybe a little billiards skills--to get a good tee shot.  You need to bank your ball off some landscaping bricks, avoid a concrete garden gnome that stands in the middle of the fairway and have the ball go 90 degrees uphill towards the green.  Along the way are other obstacles to avoid, like frogs' legs and rabbits’ feet that stick out into the fairway.

To get a hole-in-one you'll need to hit a putt with the right speed and angle to ricochet off the bricks and go uphill toward the hole.  The green is framed by an orange tree, pineapple trees, palms and succulents.

Failure to get the shot right might result in your ball's bouncing off one or more of the obstacles and coming back down the hill.  Or it might get stuck on the hill, which could be worse.

Once on the green, you will have to deal with some subtle breaks and possibly have your line of sight affected by overhanging saw palmetto branches.

Hole #8 Tee	#9 - Lower part of fairway.

#9 - Upper fairway.	Hole #9 - Green from above.

#9 Green from behind.

Hole Development

This was the second hole I created.  I wanted to do some kind of classic mini-golf "geometry" hole where you have to calculate how to bank your shot off the sides or re-directors in order to get your ball going towards the hole.

Initially, I just planned on having wooden borders, then I had the idea of re-purposing some yellow-painted landscaping bricks as the borders.  The bricks had been used in small decorative walls in the garden with metal and concrete bunnies and frogs perched on them.  After setting up the brick wall along the edges of the fairway, I decided to also make the creatures that had been sitting on and around the old walls part of the hole.  The "handicapped gnome" (he's missing an arm) was moved over from the backyard bench to create the primary obstacle of the hole.

The original hole had the L-shaped fairway reversed with the tee on the longer part of the L.  It also was in a different part of the yard (where #2 is now) and the tee extended out into the grass (which, of course, killed the grass).  The tee shot also passed under a bush which had a small pumpkin hanging from a bungee cord over the fairway.  Prior to hitting your tee shot, the pumpkin was set swinging, creating another obstacle to avoid.

When I decided to not have any holes on or over the actual lawn, I moved this hole to the garden area.  The only reasonable way to fit it in amongst the existing vegetation was to reverse the L.  I also decided it was hard enough without the swinging pumpkin (especially since the pumpkin had gone bad by then).  Plus, I now had other holes with moving obstacles to hit through (#3 and #4).

When I decided to use the yellow bricks on this hole, I also decided to call it "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road."  With the first hole already dubbed "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," the precedent of having the holes' names based on song titles was established.

Original Goodbye Yellow Brick Road hole before the gnome and swinging pumpkin were added.

How It Was Built

There was nothing fancy about constructing this one with the boards connected with mending plates, bricks set on top of the edges and garden rabbits and frogs placed on or next to the wall.  The green is shared with hole #7 (how it was constructed is described there).

As for all the creepy bunnies, frogs and other creatures that line the fairway, before I retired, they had all been in the garden but looking kind of weathered.  When I found all these cans of paint while cleaning out the garage, I decided to put them to use rather than throwing them out.  So I painted the pelican, gnome and everything else with the white, blue, purple, yellow and green paints long before I started work on the golf course.

In the picture of the fairway you might notice a strange metal, spiral-looking thing.  This is actually a vintage, stand-alone drink holder that you stick into the ground.  The two that are alongside this hole belonged to my parents and were salvaged by my brother.  It's kind of fitting that something that had been stuck in the ground in the yard I wanted to pave over now is stuck in the ground next to the mini-golf course I had pledged to build all those decades ago.