Today's Strangest Internet Find Is A Collection Of Every Televised Putt-Putt Golf Championship Ever
Are you familiar with Putt-Putt Golf? Well, the legend began in June of 1954, when Don Clayton opened his first Putt-Putt course in Fayetteville, North Carolina. That's not from Wikipedia — that's from the opening of the 1995 PPA Skins Championship:
The Professional Putters Association, or PPA, is the organizing body of competitive Putt-Putt (don't you dare call it mini-golf). To help promote the sport — and the branded, franchised Putt-Putt courses — the championships have been televised since the '60s. Four years ago, while absolutely no-one was looking, the PPA uploaded close to 50 years of these televised championships to Vimeo.
These championship specials are some of the oddest time capsules you'll ever find online. Meticulous archival of Super Bowls, Macy's Thanksgiving Parades and Wrestlemanias all make sense given their popularity, but these PPA Championships aren't just windows into a shared past. These videos give you snapshots throughout the complete history of a mega-niche sport.
It's arguably way more fun to hop around the videos and pick apart stylistic and cultural changes over time than it is to watch them play. Compare the video above to the one below from 20 years earlier. The announcers go from suits and ties to powder-blue polos. The cars parked at the edge of the courses change from streamlined pontooned autos to boxy-looking boats on wheels. The only thing that doesn't change is that every Putt-Putt course just looks like some astroturf and concrete next to a parking lot.
Bless the PPA for archiving all these boring, wonderful championships, and thank them for giving us this image from the intro to the 1996 games:
And remember: Don't call it miniature golf. Just don't.