Rocky Gorge Mini-Golf & Batting Cage Return to Maryland page

8445 Old Columbia Rd
Laurel, MD 20723
(307) 725-0888

Price: $4

Par: 51 (it’s also a 19 hole course) Other Activities: Batting Cage, Driving Range, Arcade

Difficulty: 2

Creativity: 8

Atmosphere: 8

Yet another in a growing list of courses we’ve played that are pure fun. It may not be the most exciting or challenging course out there, but you’ll have a fun time playing it. The course starts off with one of the most unique holes we’ve ever seen. The hole is done like a pitching mound (in a tribute to the attached batting cages). You start with the ball on the pitchers rubber (elevated of course) and putt down the carpet (brown to simulate the dirt) to a home-plate shaped hole (never seen before in any course), behind which is a cutout of a catcher and umpire. Although none of the other holes are as creative (except for the exceptionally long 19^th hole), that hole alone makes the course. That’s not to say there aren’t holes worth mentioning. The lighthouse hole is a little unique in the way you putt into the lighthouse which sits alone in the water, they have a Washington Monument hole (which is more than we can say for the course we played that’s in D.C.) and the singing lonesome pine on Hole #8 is definitely a little freaky. However, to anyone who has ever read Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, Hole #16 will give you nightmares. Although Blaine the Mono was supposed to be a monorail, it is often depicted as a slightly distorted steam engine on covers of the older paperbacks. The engine that is the obstacle on this course is Blaine. It has a weird, Picasso like feeling to it with weird angles and odd colors and even if you’ve never read King, the train will surely freak you out.

Moving through the course one will notice that the cups are all slightly larger than normal. It’s not much, maybe a ¼” but you can definitely tell (which is why the difficulty is lower on this course). The course also uses metal triangles as obstacles, which provides less vibrant bounces than rocks or bricks. Also, sometimes even if you manage to putt right into Blaine with a normal strength putt, the ball will fall out of the metal track and become stuck under Blaine which is kind of annoying. Local color is added to the course with the Rocky Gorge jail hole and the last hole claims to be the world’s longest (although we don’t know if it really is). The man at the desk was also very pleasant, informing us that during the early part of the week you can play all day for the price of one round. He also let us know that with a large group ahead of us, it was ok to skip around to different hole if they were open so we didn’t have to wait. It’s an altogether good course worth playing if you’re in the area, especially since it’s easy to get to off of Route 95.

Reviewed by Pat, Mandy and Putt

Reviewed in 2003

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Course Pictures (click to enlarge)

The famous Washington Monument Putt in jail for reasons unknown

Blaine the Mono for all the Dark Tower Fans Putt practicing his pitching

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