Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 19, 1993 TAG: 9312190018
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: D-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RUSSELL E. ESHLEMAN JR. KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: HARRISBURG, PA. LENGTH: Medium
Is "miniature" golf different from regular golf?
Luckily, the judges didn't have to start from scratch in making their decision. Lawyers in the case agreed to this much:
In miniature golf, only one club, "known as a putter," is needed. To play, "participants strike a ball with the putter at each hole from a tee-off spot and attempt to putt the ball in a hole in the least number of strokes possible."
Miniature-golfers "must negotiate various hazards" and "move from one hole to the next in a numerical order . . . under their own power without the assistance of any mechanical devices."
The job was to decide if a municipality near Hershey could force a miniature-golf course to charge customers an amusement tax, even though regular golf courses are exempt from doing the same.
Like Nicklaus with a 9-iron, Judge James Gardner Colins negotiated the legal hazards of the case.
In miniature golf, he noted in a 10-page opinion, "one expects to play an extremely simplified version of the game of golf on an artificial, carpeted surface where the distance between holes is only a few feet, using only a putter to maneuver the ball around small, artificial obstacles placed on the course."
In contrast, wrote Colins, "when the General Assembly limited the rate of admissions or amusement tax imposed on a golf course, it used the term `golf course' to describe the term commonly understood as a place where conventional golf can be played by attempting to strike the golf ball in the air from a designated tee area toward a clearly defined fairway or green."
Colins also agreed with the municipality's rationale for not taxing conventional courses.
Golf "is an activity used predominantly for fitness," he wrote, "and the township wants to promote fitness among its residents."
In summary, he ruled, the two types of course are "vastly dissimilar facilities, which offer empirically different activities. Conventional golf is an athletic pursuit used for recreation, whereas miniature golf is a purer form of diversion which is much more readily recognized as an amusement."
Thus, the miniature golf course can be taxed, which, in this day of governments looking everywhere for revenue, is par for the course.
by CNB