With The Masters — golf’s first (and best) major tournament — starting today, a few thoughts crossed my mind:

• The PGA Tour needs to create a robot if Tiger Woods is ever going to receive legitimate competition.

• I’m really happy that this tournament, along with Major League Baseball continuing its first week of real games, is certain to overshadow the Frozen Four this weekend. Sorry, Boston College. Dice-K’s first-ever MLB start is going to push you to the second page of every local newspaper, win or lose.

• Most importantly, I’ve come up with a proposal to create our school’s newest intramural sport: mini golf.

When you think about it, if there’s one thing this city is lacking, it’s a miniature golf course. You can find just about everything in Boston — hockey rinks, hotels, Manny being Manny and funny accents — but you can’t get one measly place to play some mini golf.

Nevermind the city building one, though. We’re going to take matters into our own hands by making one here at BU, no matter what the cost. Our varsity golf team may have to travel for its matches, but we aren’t leaving campus to break out our flat blades and colorful golf balls.

Unfortunately, some rules have to be established before landscaping gets underway. Fortunately, I came up with some ideas.

I figure we keep things simple here. We’ll play in foursomes (groups of four, for the non-golfers). Two players in each group are teammates, the other two will be their opponents. Lowest combined score wins. Fake sportsmanlike handshakes at round’s end are necessary.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, imagine the possibilities of this 18-hole course. I already envision the first hole being something similar to the scene in Happy Gilmore when Happy hits the ball into the clown’s mouth, only to have the clown spit out the ball several times. At BU Mini Golf Land, we’ll replace the clown’s head with a giant Rhett head. A difficult hole out of the gates will toughen up everyone’s game.

On second thought, this hole could lead to disaster. I can certainly see myself being among many BU students who would have to be restrained from attacking the spitting, laughing Rhett. I see enough of that at the hockey and basketball games. Damage to the opening hole probably isn’t a good way to get things started for the course, anyway.

I see a lot of other holes that could work, though. Looking down the course list, the eighth hole should certainly be a student favorite. The hole follows a downhill slope, ensuring the ball will pick up speed, until it crashes into a backstop picture of BC men’s hockey coach Jerry York’s head. There is strategy involved, too: To get a hole-in-one, aim to hit the ball directly in the middle of York’s balding, and it will fall right into the cup. Should work every time.

The 12th hole could also turn out to be a doozy. A flat, straight shot would seemingly mean that the hole is a simple one — but not so fast my friend. Acton figures of all your favorite dining hall swipers (along with their registers) will form a blockade some 10 feet from your starting position. Accuracy will be essential to squeeze through the ladies and make it to the other side. You can just never sneak past them, can you?

All this hype brings us to the one little obstacle that I know you’re all wondering about. Where on campus should BU Mini Golf Land be located?

Well, due to the fact that we don’t have a lot of green space on our campus, we’re going to have to create some.

If you ask me, the former Burger King parking lot along Commonwealth Avenue is a perfect fit. I mean, honestly, that space across from Taco Bell is utterly depressing. They take away fast food and replace it with parking spaces. Well, I say it’s time for us to fight back. Who wouldn’t love to green BU a little bit and get a quick practice round in whenever you’ve got a break between classes. It’s a win-win situation for all of us.

Chris Lyons, a junior in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].