There are conflicting accounts as to what prompted Garnet Carter, who already owned a real golf course, to open a miniature one in the late 1920s. His wife, Frieda, believed it was meant to distract “golf widows” — much as the Ladies Putting Club, built in 1867, did at the renowned St. Andrews links in Scotland. But Carter, who owned the Fairyland Inn, a hotel outside Chattanooga, Tenn., created more than a distraction. His course was different from other forays into mini-golf. It had hollowed-out tree trunks and gnomes. It was, write Nina Garfinkel and Maria Reidelbach in “Miniature Golf,” “a way of reinforcing the Never Never Land atmosphere the inn strove to create.”
