Hago Harrington’s - Stoneham, MA
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Score: 70/100
Would we play this course again? Yes.
Should you play this course? Yes.
The Takeaway: Terrible course conditions lend an almost eerie yet strangely exhilarating post-apocalyptic feeling to this course akin to sneaking into an abandoned amusement park and finding that all the rides still work. While time has taken a toll on this course, torn greens and broken benches aren’t nearly enough to overshadow a timeless and creative 18-hole old-school throwback odyssey brimming with the enduring spirit of a 1950’s handyman’s work ethic on nearly every hole. There is no doubt this course was originally a labor of love and it shows, despite its sadly neglected condition. Play this course before it closes in a couple years, and be sure not to miss the wonderful Fenway Park hole, or really any of the holes.
TECHNICAL REVIEW
Hago Harrington’s is an 18-hole outdoor mini golf course in Stoneham, Massachusetts. Located on a busy, strip-mall dotted stretch of road and surrounded by chain link fence with barbed-wire atop it, Hago’s is inconspicuously situated, looking like a vacant lot and barely discernible as a mini golf course at all. But look more closely and you’ll spot the telltale mini golf course entrance shack that these reviewers are drawn to like moths to a flame.
The course presents a family friendly environment. Hole artwork and props are all brightly colored, they serve ice cream, and there are a couple of common picnic tables to congregate at in the middle of the course that undoubtedly have seen use by thousands of families since the 1950’s, been exposed to countless dropped ice cream cones, and played witness to a hundred thousand sibling arguments or more.
The layout of holes follows a mostly circular pattern, starting right at the entrance and moving roughly counterclockwise around a large, central round stone water fountain akin to what one might find in a small square in Italy or France. The water feature has long run dry and fallen into disrepair, though it’s unclear whether this was an intentional shutdown or due to unpaid water bills, exorbitantly high liability insurance premiums associated with mini-golf aquatic features, or perhaps just an owner-harbored disdain for the polar covalent bond exhibited by the water molecule itself.
The course starts off aggressively with an all or nothing put straight at the mouth of a frog. Either you sink it into the mouth and get passed through towards the hole or have the ball bounce right back at you while everyone waiting in line to enter watches you and judges. Holes then dial back the challenge for a few simplistic straight-shots featuring a large duck, a rainbow-painted double-speedbump type hole, and a classic windmill hole (unpowered, though perhaps it spins during gale force winds). These holes serve as a terrific warm up, and the course builds a gentle head of steam as the player continues, carrying one forward with intrigue and wondering what challenge the next hole will bring.
While there is no unified course theme, each hole (which are all named on the scorecard, a nice touch) manages to delight in a unique way, be it a giant sweeping 90 degree concrete arc, a little covered house putt-through hole (in general miniature house structures on this course are built with attention to architectural detail demonstrating original construction pride and perhaps a hint of obsession) or an opportunity to twirl a well-aimed ball around around a classic barber pole in a Mad Max-esque piece of vehicle exhaust work. Topographical variation is used sparingly but effectively. At the 10th hole (“King Tut”) one begins to work their way back into the shade of trees with a putt-through of a magnificent, highly detailed, and— considering the general condition of the rest of the course— surprisingly clean and well-maintained sarcophagus. It’s impressive, and at least to this reviewer’s eyes may even rival the real thing.
Make no mistake, this course is in very poor condition, with greens that have many rips, tears, bumps, and other uneven undulations from years of course traffic, weather, and general neglect. Players also putt from starting mats, which are in rough shape and present an annoyance. Many a player might be inclined to skewer this course on these conditions alone.
And yet Hago Harrington’s is still a great course. It’s chock-full of terrific old-school, classic obstacles and brims with a sort of creativity imbued with a 1950’s-style handyman ethic. One can imagine the vintage ad copy for how to build a wishing-well house style hole (hole 9, “Wishing Well”) appearing in the back pages of a 1950’s hobby magazine: “You Too Can Build This Terrific Mini Golf Hole With $2.27 Worth Of Lumber And 32 Cents Worth Of Nails! Send Today For More Info.”
There are more fun holes as one winds along the back stretch, including hole 12, located only yards from the sarcophagus hole but transported forward thousands of years in time to Fenway Park featuring a two-tier hole involving a putt up a long ramp towards a detailed Green Monster fence replica, along with a Citgo sign and a Red Sox logo. The level of detail here is terrific and authentic.
Carrying on the sports theme a couple holes later, there is a great Patriots football-inspired field goal style hole, where one is given the chance to split the uprights with a putt and go right at the hole, or miss it wide and get relegated to an inferior lie. Fun and unpretentious creativity are on display here, along with some Yankee ingenuity that lends the feeling of a mini golf hole that one might concoct in their own backyard during a weekend of productive beer drinking and raiding the tool shed for odd pieces of PVC pipe and leftover 2x4s.
One can imagine that decades ago someone spent hours studying Polaroids of the Green Monster taken at a game, or poring over grainy antenna broadcast TV footage over the course of a season’s worth of losing-record Red Sox games to hone their paintwork for this Fenway Park hole. Whether any of this is true or it was simply recently touched-up with the assistance of a quick Google image search is of little matter.
Hago Harrington’s is a time machine course that sends you sinking into your Grandparent’s couch on a Saturday night when you were 11 years old, comfortably half asleep watching TV while they smoke cigarettes in the kitchen, and drink, and laugh and listen to the police scanner, taking breaks only to ask if you want another miniature 3 Musketeers bar or a can of Moxie. Exactly where and when this time machine will send you can only be determined by the intricacies of your own colorful life history, but rest assured that Hago Harrington’s will get you there.
APPENDIX
An unassuming mini golf course tucked away behind a battered parking lot on busy stretch of road may not give one reason to pause. Those that do pause and decide to play certainly may not expect to experience a course with such a seemingly rich old-school design. Though clearly in the twilight of its life and showing its age, no one can accuse Hago Harrington’s of lacking brilliance and ambition. Every putt on threadbare greens surrounded by cracked concrete hammers it home that you are strolling along the grave of greatness.
Opened apparently in the early 1950’s, this course was clearly built to bring people together and provide entertaining and challenging holes to test your putting prowess. And while it’s clear that this course’s prime might have been over a decade or two ago, there is still evidence all around that points to a much brighter past, far from the presently petrified gumballs in the 6-foot tall gumball machine on hole 8 (“Patriot Place”) that have been baked to perfection over what must be a dozen or more New England summers, and far from the cracked and faded wooden benches near several starting tees.
Post-round discussions with the older, local employee manning the entrance booth (not the owner) elicited stories of a course that in its days provided quite a scene, between the course itself and a bustle of activity on Route 28. One can imagine the fun spilling out from the course into the Hago Harrington’s parking lot, during a time when cars were heavy and liquor laws lightly enforced. If only that parking lot could talk.
Real or totally-imagined and saccharine sentimental histories aside, Hago’s still seems to operate successfully and sources suggest this is a bustling and lucrative course especially on weekends (we played on a quiet weekday). It appears that ownership is making no course upgrades and may be biding time waiting for an inevitable and profitable real estate deal during which this place will be plowed under and turned into condos (à la the Route 1 Saugus mini golf course of orange dinosaur fame).
As described in the technical review above, despite the engaging and fun design, pleasant ambiance, and colorful props, the actually putting leaves a lot to be desired. The greens are worn through, the footpaths cracked and uneven, and the water feature holes have literally run dry (hole 17 “House on the Lake”). But then, as good and decent people we don’t go around berating our parents and grandparents for their bad knees, forgetfulness, and litany of other shortcomings: we love them as they are.
And so it is that these reviewers recommend taking the time out of your busy day to experience this fun classic course. To hammer the metaphors home: just because your favorite player is well past his prime, that does not mean you should not go out and see him play one last time before he retires, or gets turned into condos. And unlike with Tom Brady, this Hago Harrington’s will certainly not be coming back from retirement.