Mike Young's new business is bringing mini-golf to the customers. He rents portable miniature golf courses, like the one pictured, for use at corporate and family events. Young is pictured with a mini-golf hole set up in his front yard in Cedar Rapids on Monday, November 23, 2009. (Crystal LoGiudice/The Gazette)

Michael Young used to travel to miniature golf courses.

Now, he brings them to you.

Young started Miniature Golf On-the-Go, a business that rents portable mini-golf courses by day, week, or two-hour session, in July. He hopes the tiny home-based business will expand the reach of his lifelong hobby, and bring in a modest profit.

For $150, Young will bring his nine-hole miniature golf course to a family gathering for two hours. For $500, he will rent it out for a week, delivery and setup included.

Young believes in the magic of mini-golf. He says it’s one sport that all generations in the family can share.

Growing up in Mason City, Young played mini-golf with his family at a local course, and sometimes built miniature golf courses with his siblings in the backyard.

As an adult, Young and his wife, Karen, took their sons miniature golfing every chance on their family vacations, wagering such things as who would get to pick the restaurant for dinner on each hole.

“I always thought that someday I would like to open a miniature golf course,” said Young, now 49, and working at Yellowbook in Cedar Rapids.

When the boys were grown, the Youngs got serious about that golf course. The numbers didn’t pencil out, however. Land and development costs would have been prohibitive, especially given the relatively short season for miniature golf in Iowa.

So Young started pursuing the next best thing, a portable miniature golf course he could set up and rent out to customers.

Young’s first effort involved building a set of wooden miniature golf features that he could disassemble. But the wooden features were still too big to carry in one vehicle and cumbersome to set up.

Then Young found a British company on the Internet that markets a portable mini-golf system so small it can almost fit in his trunk. It consists of interlocking turf mats and molded plastic features and their own carrying cases.

Young bought a nine-hole course and used a Web design firm to help him market online. He’s already got a few bookings for next year and hopes to convince groups like churches and school PTAs to rent the course for fundraising at festivals and other events.

The portable course includes most of the features commonly associated with mini-golf, including the loop-de-loop, the bridge, the anthill and the dreaded tower hole — simplified versions of the elaborate obstacles at stationary mini-golf courses.

Young hasn’t discarded his handmade golf course, which he offers at renaissance fairs. He says the name and aesthetics of the wooden course, “Mulligan’s Wee Bit O’ Golf,” fit well with the middle ages.

Miniature golf isn’t just a modern-day American icon, says Young. Ancient depictions show Chinese nobility playing a game that looks a lot like miniature golf, he says.

Young’s favorite course in Kansas City still has the lighted, motorized and buzzer-equipped course obstacles reminiscent of the 1950s, the game’s golden era. Yes, even the alligator with the mouth that opens and closes to swallow a golf ball.