MARKETPLACE, VOL. XIII, NO. 16
EDITORIAL
PAGE 2, SEPTEMBER 30, 1974
Challenge
•
..
Bill Gersh
Among the greatest moneymaking games to appear in this industry over the past 50 years
have been those games devoted to indoor and outdoor sports. Baseball, football, basketball,
bowling, boxing, soccer, horse racing, hockey, in fact every sport played and watched all
over the known world. Every sport but one most outstanding, big money sport. A sport that
lures millions of viewers. That is played all over the world. That has thousands of players
in the ranks of this industry on all levels. That sport is - golf.
For more years than anyone cares to remember, there bas not been one, just one tremend-
ously successful moneymaking coin operated game featuring golf as its theme and just as it
is played. Away back in the '20s, Cheate:I'-Pollard Mfg. Co. of New York City, came up with
a beautiful big cabinet game called, "Hoot Mon Golf". There are still some of these to be
seen in old ti.me arcades. There was one located in the lobby of the Taft Hotel in New York
for over 20 years. The player could propel the golf club to hit the tiny steel ball over
the course. That was it •
Mills Novelty Company in its heyday came out with the "Golf Ball Vender". That was a
beautiful slot machine. Some may recall a game called, "Par Golf". It could have been
labeled "Sludge" as far as the play of the game concerned itself with golf. "Tom Thumb
Golf" was the big rage of the '30s and '40s and many of these minitaure golf courses exist
to this very day. But this was not a coin operated game.
About 25 years ago we asked some well lmown manufacturers of great games who
way, pretty fair golfers themselves, why they didn't build a game incorporating
action. They gave us a dozen and more reasons why a game with golf as its theme
leading off with, "The kind of people who play coin operated games don't belong
clubs, aren't golfers, like the rougher, tougher sports."
were, by the
true golf
would flop,
to country
Well, it's been a long, long road of many great changes these past 25 years. Men and
women, boys and girls, get up as early as 6 A.M. to play 9 holes of golf on crowded public
courses before going to work or to school. Many an executive as well as many an operator
breaks away from his duties early in the afternoon to play a round of twilight golf.
...
•
All over the nation this is the golfing season. Exclusive, posh country clubs as well as
public courses are jam-packed with golfers. Great players and dubs. Yet all believe they
know the game from the proverbial A to z. Here's a challenge for some enterprising manufac-
turer to meet the need of over 45 million American golfers, not to mention another 100 mill-
ion golfers all over the world, to build the very first, great, outstanding, moneymaking
golf game - truly representative of golf. So well representing golf it will be featured in
every pro shop in the nation as well as at golf's great Master's Tournament in Augusta,Ga.
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