Hi all,

I am now back home from Odense after a quite long trip (about 20 hours with minibus). But I'm still asking myself the same question since Saturday afternoon: should I be sad having lost a medal, or should I be happy for this historical result for an Italian player?

I still have no answer...

Of course, when you arrive so close to get a medal, you are a little bit disappointed if you end in 4th place...
But I'm sure that in the next days I will be able to understand the importance and value of my result in Odense.

I left to Odense two weeks ago with the target to reach the 32 players final, because I thought it would have been very difficult for me to play on that tricky felt course, having played only one real felt tournament in the past (World Championships in Bad Münder, 2003).
Now I'm here with a 4th place, best result ever for an Italian player in a World Championships, best result ever on felt too, having beated some of the greatest european players and having played stroke to stroke with a minigolf legend like Harald.

I can say I didn't absolutely expect to get a so good final placement, also because it would have been the first time for me to play with KO-system. I surely got a small advantage in the KO-matches from the lane choices, because all the most difficult lanes on felt where I could have some troubles had been excluded from the KO-finals.
But I think I also had the merit to play with the typical mood of "nothing to lose". I was already quite happy to have got the cut of best 32 players, so I really had "nothing to lose".

In the end, I am also quite happy of my game during qualification rounds. Very happy for felt, where I played 4 regular rounds between 33 and 36 (that is very good in my opinion on this kind of felt course, when you play felt for the 2nd time in your life...), and not so happy for miniaturegolf, with 3 very good rounds 22-22-21 but one "fool"
round with 32 strokes during which I really didn't understand what happened.

Thanks to all friends that made me their congratulations for my result, thanks to Italian players and fan that helped me with big cheers from the audience during the final individual day, and thanks also to my Swiss friends that during closing ceremony prizegiving sang the "poporopopopopo" song when I was called to receive my diploma for 4th place.

See you all next year in Predazzo (or somewhere around Europe during winter)!

P.S. 25.08.2009

I forgot to write something about the experience of this first World Championship played indoor.
There are surely positive and negative aspects of that, like in all new experiences.
Main positive aspect is surely that you don't have weather problems that can cause tournament interruptions and delays.
But on the other side don't think that you can have no problem at all with ball temperature and preparation. Take the example of the bridge on miniaturegolf: coaches need to prepare the ball differently, depending if the big door at the end of the hall was open or closed. And I have experienced this kind of problem in EVERY indoor course I've ever played. If the hall is not air-conditioned you have almost same problems than outdoor in managing ball temperature and preparation.
Another negative aspect in my opinion is the placement of a new course just a few days before the tournament. Having some experience in installing minigolf courses, I know that every course, expecially miniaturegolf, need some days/weeks to get to its final status. In Odense we had a lot of lanes that every day changed their slopes, maybe just a little bit but enough to force players to change balls/lines.
This continue need of change only helps bigger nations to increase the gap with smaller nations, because if you can choose among 10000 balls and have enough experience you will find a new solution for the changed lane quicker than if you only have some hundreds balls and less experience.

I also doesn't agree that much with the choice to place very difficult courses like those we played in Odense. The more difficult is the course, the bigger is the gap between nations. And we have seen that on team results. After 1st day all the team events were almost decided, and not only for the podium (take a look in the men team event at the gap between the best 6 countries SWE-GER-AUT-SWI-FIN-ITA and the rest of the world...), and that's not so interesting for the spectators. Courses should be of an average difficulty level, so that we can see good scores by the best countries (and not some 50 on felt like we have seen) but also some competitive results coming from the other countries...