Bar Stool Golf

During the cold and snowy days of winter in Illinois, everyone is looking for a diversion, something fun and rewarding to do to take their minds off the yucky weather.  Our Bar Stool Golf fundraiser is the perfect thing!

Nine bars in the Champaign area build a miniature golf hole and place it in their bars.   Golfers, on four person teams, go from bar to bar accumulating a score on each hole they play.  The bars have specials for the day, like $1 beers, and some bars have free snacks.  We work with Starr Limousine to provide buses to transport the players between the bars.

Each of the nine bars signs up teams to play and at 11am the teams start playing at their signup bar.  Players have until 5pm to play the holes at all the bars and turn in their scorecards.  In order to get everyone through the nine bars in the time allowed, we've had to limit the number of teams we can take.

AMBUCS members, friends, and family, provide the labor and each bar needs 4-5 volunteers to move the players through the holes.  The event has been going on for a number of years and now has many teams that play every year.  Some players are from out of town and schedule their visits to Champaign on the weekend of the event just so they can play.  Also many teams dress up or have special t-shirts printed for the occasion.  In 2018, we had to turn teams away but still ended up running over 600 players through each of the bars.  2018 also saw our biggest percentage of teams finish all nine holes, 64%!

AMBUCS volunteers love to get together after the event to swap stories of the silly things that happened during the day, like the young woman who hit the golf ball a little too hard, had it bounce off the hole and land in another player's boot!

It's a fun day in the middle of winter for players and volunteers alike!