Playing through

MOSES LAKE — The new Ten Pin miniature golf course is a family dream come true.

“(It’s) something we've always kind of talked about doing,” said Cale Russell, the CEO of Ten Pin Territory, which includes Lake Bowl, Ten Pin Brewing, Papa’s Casino and Ten Pin Inn & Suites, all located on the north side of State Route 17 where it crosses Stratford Road. “There were plans kind of hanging in the office for years that we've toyed with.”

Russell is a third-generation supplier of fun in the Basin. His grandparents started Lake Bowl in the 1950s, he said, and his family still runs it. The mini-golf course opened in July, in a little park space between the bowling alley and the hotel.

“We get a lot of days of sun here,” Russell said. “We get beautiful weather through the summer, and even our shoulder seasons are great. So we liked an outdoor thing. We had a park there, which was just a lot of grass, and we felt like that was underutilized. But the footprint was right on for an 18-hole mini-golf course.”

Many miniature golf courses are replete with moving parts, with windmills and buildings with revolving doors and the like. Ten Pin’s is designed along simpler lines, Russell said; the challenge is in the terrain, not the machinery.

“We went a little more on the competition side of mini golf so that you can have some fun … It poses a challenging course for people that are really interested in proving themselves with the putter.”

One part that does move is driven by gravity: the water hazard. The water starts uphill and flows all through the course with waterfalls and wooden footbridges to cross.

“One of the waterfalls has a stream that leads into the lower pond,” Russell said. “And if you play the course enough, you'll find that there's a small couple of gaps; you can hit (the ball) into the water and it actually funnels out onto the course. It's one of those things we don't tell people, we just sort of let them find it out.”

The goal is to have all the fun in one place, Russell said.

“We look at this as, ‘We hope you can pull into Ten Pin and check into your room and you have everything you need here: you have mini-golf fun, you have bowling, you have a casino, you have a lounge and restaurant,’” he said.

That proximity was on the minds of Brittany and Jose Aguinaga, who were playing the course Saturday.

“This is our first time playing,” Brittany said. “We’ll have to bring the kids next time.”

Their children were inside the bowling alley at a birthday party, she explained.

“We can be out here while they’re in there,” Jose said.

“Mini-golf is one of those things that appeals to all ages,” Russell said. “It’s similar to bowling, you know? We have senior leagues all the way down to kids’ leagues on Saturdays, so, you know, a 5-year-old can bowl with Grandma. Mini-golf is a similar thing. It's not an embarrassing sport. It's one where (no matter) your skill level or your talent level, you can still get up there and bounce it off the walls and hit a hole-in-one.”

In an earlier edition of this story, Cale Russell's name was spelled incorrectly. It has been corrected above.