Three brothers, Glenn, Jack and Clifford Dismukes, opened a miniature golf course on this sloping corner where Barton Springs Road meets South Lamar in 1948, and it has been in the same family ever since. It was called Varsity Links at first. The name that stuck came from the giant Peter Pan that Glenn built at the entrance, one of a menagerie of hand made concrete figures that also includes a whale, a clown and a dinosaur the family calls Trex. Two eighteen hole courses run up and down the hillside past them, and the mid century clubhouse is still the clubhouse. Almost nothing about the place has been modernised. The obstacles are the originals, patched and repainted rather than replaced, and a thorough repaint in 2013 brightened the colours without changing anything else. Players have long brought their own coolers to the picnic tables, which is a large part of why a mini golf course became an adult institution in a college town. Glenn Dismukes made most of the statues himself, and his granddaughter Margaret Dismukes Massad runs the business now, more than seventy five years after it opened. Land this close to downtown has been under obvious development pressure for decades, which is the usual reason a course like this disappears, and the fact that it is still here is the unusual part.
Getting there
30.2601, -97.7577
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
