Miniature golf locations expect more crowds with stage 4

GRANGER, Ind. -- Ninja Golf, a family-owned Japanese themed miniature golf course with games, took a few months during the beginning of the pandemic to figure out what the best steps were to reopen safely.

“We took a pause while the stay at home orders were in place, and it was a wait, wait and see, wait and see, and getting direction and learning how we’re going to operate the business a little differently this year,” Ninja Golf Owner John Miller said.

Ninja Golf reopened in May, and since then, they’ve taken measures to ensure that they keep everything safe and sanitary, cleaning off golf clubs, golf balls, and enforcing a safe distance of six feet between golfers.

“The clubs and balls are sanitized; they don’t get played with again until they’re clean and sanitized. We don’t have a lot of high touch points; you know the cups, and just the constant cleaning and care,” Miller said.

“We were always known for our cleanliness of the building, if you’ve been here we keep everything super clean and so it’s just more of the same for us really.”

Just a few weeks ago, Ninja Golf started slowly opening back up, allowing families to grab a bite to eat, sing songs in their karaoke room and even take on a challenge in their laser maze.

“We kind of started there with you can come out, you can be outside and then as the phases went through, we allowed more people to come inside, you know take their refreshments inside, so we’ve kind of had our own phased in program,” Miller said.

Now that the weather has gotten better, the crowds have gotten larger. Miller said that although stage 4 hasn’t brought any drastic changes to the way things have been in the last month, it had allowed more people to come out and enjoy time at the course with their friends and families.

“Stage 4 has kind of just allowed us to allow more people to come in, in a way and to schedule bigger groups for us, so it hasn’t been a huge change for us in stage 4,” Miller said.

Miller said that in the months to come, that Ninja Golf will continue to stand by CDC guidelines, making sure that their golf course remains safe and sanitary for their employees and customers.