The Mission’s new indoor mini-golf course is for having fun, not keeping score

I gave up trying to keep score about five holes into my round of mini golf at Holey Moley, a new two-story indoor course in the Mission. Not because I got one double bogey after another — although I did — but because I couldn’t simultaneously hold my score sheet, mini pencil, golf ball, putter and $14 Rub a Dub in the Tub cocktail. 

That latter, served in a white plastic vessel that looks like a bathtub and must be gripped from below, contained a cocktail made with gin (bathtub gin, get it?), Aperol, lime juice and peach schnapps. It’s served over ice, topped with prosecco and garnished with a rubber ducky. It was a lightly bitter novelty served by a bartender who was wearing golf pants in a very loud print.

Rest assured, you don’t go to Holey Moley for the sophisticated drinks, just as you don’t go to qualify for the PGA. It’s meant to be a goofy, boozy fun time, gracelessly whacking a golf ball around on heavily art-directed holes, with the same dubious commitment to wellness as chain-smoking pro golfer John Daly. 

While its predecessor, Urban Putt, went big on the San Francisco theme, Holey Moley gets a little more creative. The first hole is all about fine art, with subsequent ones riffing on Scrabble, the Flintstones and the 1969 lunar landing. One pink wallpapered setup felt like it was airlifted straight from the old Museum of Ice Cream. You’d never know the building used to be a mortuary.

Holey Moley, which also has locations in Austin, Houston and Denver, allows people to play nine holes for $14 or 18 holes for $26 (discounted to $10 or $20 for anyone under 21). The bells and whistles are mostly confined to the front nine, although going for the full 18 means golfers get to venture upstairs, where it’s much calmer. The kitchen is up there, too, where french fries are served in a shopping cart with functioning wheels.

The game took about an hour and a half, enough time to put down one bathtub and one Pop Til You Drop (vodka, lime, watermelon and prosecco, served in an adorable ceramic unicorn head) for $14. 

I didn’t win, but since low-stakes competition plus two drinks tends to bring out the tiger — not the Tiger — in me, maybe, in the end, I did.