It is a great family disappointment that I could never get into golf. My late grandfather would become so engrossed watching the Masters that he used to light one cigarette off the other. But it was always unfathomable to me. Attempts to play at school were less a good walk spoiled and more a Friday afternoon wasted. Yet my antipathy has a glorious exception: there are few things in life I enjoy more than a round of crazy golf.

For years I have toured the nation’s courses, putting past plastic dinosaurs and animatronic windmills, Slush Puppy and scorecard in hand. ‘Proper’ golf is difficult. Crazy golf reduces it to the essentials: hole, putter and Newtonian physics, the odd stegosaurus notwithstanding. Whereas traditional golf seems stuffy, crazy golf is relaxed and accessible – as silly a sport as one can play without becoming one of those........

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