Mini golf, maxi fun

Like a bad dream, they keep coming at you, one after the other, on nearly every corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Coastal Highway. , built one indoors. So what if the Undersea Adventure sometimes smells like a basement? Who cares if the cheesy mermaid mechanically flaps her tail and the wavy-lipped clam opens and closes its mouth on sputtering hinges? If you've ever been trapped inside a beach condo with a couple of kids and a Wiggles video, you'd be happy to play inside a sunken submarine, too.

Handicap Hole: Don't be fooled by the burbling brook to the right on Number 11. Dodge the rocks on your left to go straight through and you'll wind up where you want to be.

Undersea Adventure

68th Street & Coastal Highway

$4.50-$6.50 per person; children 2 and under free

410-524-2645

The Empty Your Pockets Course

Lost Galaxy Golf screams for attention with its red waterfall, its green alien, and its hulking meteorite. But tell yourself you've landed on another planet because the entrance to this course forces you and your kids to walk through the video arcade and the laser tag and the snack bar and the ball pit before you even get to the first green.

"Take me to your leader," you might as well say. "Take all my money now."

Handicap Hole: The comma-shaped berm on Number 8 is your friend. Aim to roll your ball from the left-hand side of the comma around the rim and hit it hard enough it will bank off the opposite wall and roll in. Hit the berm dead-on and you'll be starting over - and buying the first round at the snack bar afterward.

Lost Galaxy Golf

33rd Street & Coastal Highway

$7 per person

410-524-4386

The Ready for Adventure Course

If you find yourself stuck behind a party of six and every one of them takes a mulligan, you might as well be stuck in a place that amuses you. You could do worse than be stuck at Professor Hacker's Lost Treasure Golf. This is a course that makes fun of itself and appeals to adults and kids alike. Professor Duffer Hacker is an archaeologist like Indiana Jones. That's his 1930s airplane crashed on top of the boulders, and he's the one who discovered the skull cave looking for diamonds and gold.

The course is all the way up at 139th Street, almost to Fenwick Island, but it's a discovery worth your time.

Handicap Hole: Number 3 on the diamond course is a tricky series of cascading holes. You want Numero Uno. The second hole sends you off in la-la land, and the third hole ships your ball to the moon.

Professor Hacker's Lost Treasure Golf

139th Street & Coastal Highway

$3.50-$7 per person

410-250-5678

The Wear 'Em Out Course

A family of four can spend $28 on a round at the fancier courses where they don't offer discounts even for toddlers. To get the most for your money, try Ice Land Golf. It's the giant igloo three blocks south of U.S. 50. So maybe you can see the hoses feeding the pools, and maybe the stucco is flaking and the air-brushed polar bears and penguins are looking a little weathered. So what?

You've got Trimpers Ferris wheel in front of you, condos behind you, the fishing pier on your right, a "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved" sign on your left.

It doesn't get any more