Posh Putt-Putt — Inside the Mini Golf Boom in Dallas-Fort Worth

When I think of mini golf, I think of childhood — those tiny pencils, the disturbing clown mouth, losing every single time to my siblings. But the miniature golf of today is not the game of yore. The putt-putt courses that have opened in the last five years around Dallas-Fort Worth are 2.0 versions of the classics. In fact, they’re kind of fancy. They have score-keeping apps. Dinner menus. Craft cocktails. Ladies’ nights. Karaoke. Dallas mini golf has entered a new era. 

The brand-new PopStroke at Grandscape in the Colony is the most recent and swankiest addition to these tricked-out mini-golf businesses. The place is clean, well maintained, and classy — not a windmill in sight. Like a real golf course, PopStroke emits a country-club vibe. It includes two outdoor 18-hole courses, one easy(ish), one more difficult. The brand is partially owned by Tiger Woods and the concept is something like, Let the grownups drink. Almost as soon as you walk in, you see the indoor bar. A few steps away at the outdoor bar, people throw back cold beers and eat wings and fish tacos. And at every hole, there’s a QR code for drink delivery, lest you have a cocktail emergency.

In the world of posh putt-putt, there’s a stroke for every folk—Tiger Woods-sanctioned putt-putt, party putt-putt, putt-putt paired with pickleball. Right next to PopStroke, Puttery opened three years ago, advertising itself as adults-only (though kids are allowed on Sundays and during daytime hours on weekdays) and offering four themed indoor courses. If PopStroke is minimalist, Puttery is maximalist—one of the courses is set in an “Illusion” room, for instance—but the message is similar: Mini golf has been reinvented, and it absolutely includes dinner.

Puttshack, with its discotheque ambiance, set up shop in Addison at the end of 2023. There, the high-tech balls keep score for you, music videos blare on “Wayback Wednesdayz,” and a live DJ plays on the weekends. In West Dallas, Another Round (the only non-corporate business on the list) opened in 2020. It’s a hipster magnet, luring customers with not just mini golf, but golf simulators, pickleball, cornhole, and a game that fuses shuffleboard and golf and is inexplicably called not guffleboard, but duffleboard. 

A Mini Golf Boom

The mini golf explosion in Dallas reflects a national trend: Real golf is booming; putt-putt is booming; putt-putt’s earnest cousin, simulator golf, is booming. Tiger Woods isn’t the only public figure who’s cashing in. PGA superstar Rory McIlroy is part-owner of Puttery and celebrity chef Danny Meyer recently invested $20 million into Five Iron Golf. The powers-that-be in the real golf world have been working to shed the sport’s reputation as elitist, cost-prohibitive, white, and man-centric. To that end, golf organizations have gotten serious about outreach to under-represented communities. Over the last five years, golf participation in the U.S. has risen from 24.2 million people to 26.6 million. So there seems to be a trickle-down effect: As more people become acquainted with golf, more people gravitate to the challenge of hitting a ball three yards, instead of 300.

PopStroke feels the most like an actual golf course. Maybe that’s the Tiger Woods influence. It’s laid back, it’s outside, the beers are icy cold, and when I went with my boyfriend, I beat him. It was the first time I ever beat anyone at putt-putt. Maybe that’s a selling point to nobody but me, but one thing is for sure: You will be better at mini golf than at golf. And in Dallas, now’s the time to give it a swing.