Circular Golf

Charles Meaden, a lawyer and avid golfer in Englewood, New Jersey, has spent a lot of time contemplating the dearth of golf courses near urban areas.

So Meaden invented a game he calls Hybrid Golf that can be played on a 350 square-metre course, as opposed to the 40 hectares that golf courses normally occupy. Its other main feature is that it uses bar-code scanning to keep score.

The course consists of six straight holes that radiate from a center tee-off area. The first hole is the longest, about 220 yards, and each hole gets shorter as the player moves around the course, with the last being about 100 yards. A player gets only one shot on each hole. If the ball hits within a 10-yard radius it will roll down into the hole because the course slopes inward like a funnel.

"You move through a progression of shots that is very similar to the way you might play a par 5 hole in golf", Meaden said. "You would play a drive for the first shot, then a long iron, an approach iron, and a chip shot to the green. Hybrid golf is better practice for real golf that a driving range, where a lot of people repeat the same swing over and over again with the same club."

If a shot goes in, the player receives a zero score for the hole. If it stays on the course he receives one point. (As in regular golf, the fewer points, the better.)
When a player begins his game, he receives a sleeve of golf balls all marked with the same bar code.

"He takes one of the balls and scans it just as he would at a supermarket checkout," Meaden said. "Then he has a certain amount of time to play his shot."

Meaden said the computerized scoring would allow people in different cities to compete against each other.