Miniature Golf

Army Sgt. Jerrod Fields, who lost his left leg to a roadside explosion in Baghdad in 2005, believes the trick to life is turning a temporary inconvenience into a permanent improvement. With his prosthetic limb, the 26-year-old Fields has done that. He has become a champion sprinter and hopes to compete in the 2012 Paralympic Games in London.

THE volcano belching steam over my head was making it difficult to concentrate on the 13th hole, as was Don Ho crooning from the loudspeaker tucked into the palm tree.

Put a golf club in a beginner's hands and strange things start happening. Normally relaxed hands clutch the club with white knuckles, loose muscles instantly achieve inflexible status and a slew of swing thoughts flood the brain.

It's a fun place to play a round of miniature golf, race around a go-cart track, challenge the latest video games, take a ride on a Ferris wheel or take a turn in a batting cage.

Golf 'N Stuff, that giant baby-sitter off the Ventura Freeway in Ventura, has been entertaining kids daily since it opened in 1974. You enter through a giant indoor video arcade.

Plenty of studio honchos play golf, but for this filmmaker, miniature golf is indie turf. Scott King, whose plucky King Pictures has hatched such quirky projects as the 1996 documentary "Shotgun Freeway: Drives Thru Lost L.