As we are beginning the year 2009, the relations of some minigolf leaders are freezing colder than they have been in many years. The political climate of internatonal minigolf took a turn to colder direction in Tampere 2008, when some big leaders decided to play Sweden out of the board of EMF. Secret agreements were made only some hours before the EMF Delegates Conference, and the surprising cards were played on the table in the EMF meeting. Sweden had no time to analyze the situation or to search political allies, so the game was over.

Now we are left wondering, when (if ever) the current minigolf leaders of the biggest countries will regain the trust of each other. And how this will affect the politics of international minigolf federations, and their ability to make productive decisions in the near future. Those who care about the future of our game, have half a year time to understand this new political situation, before the next chapter of this story will be written in WMF meetings of August 2009.



The cup

Now is that time of the year again, when minigolfers are sleeping over the cold winter, life is quiet in our sport, and the Technical Committee of WMF has its annual meeting, to define (or re-define) what minigolf is, and how the game will be played next year. The annual meeting of Technical Committee is in Odense, Denmark, on 31 January 2009.

During the quiet winters of 2007 and 2008, the Technical Committee introduced a big vision for the future of minigolf:

• great audiences watching our competitions
• people celebrating the sensational cup winner
• television stations become interested in minigolf
• stylish players looking cool in the camera

These ideas and dreams sound quite good. A bit optimistic, but otherwise good. Except one important thing: Cup system was known to be a controversial, risky decision. Possibly the most unpopular decision in the history of WMF.

So the years 2007 and 2008 have come and gone. We got cup winners, but they were celebrated with less enthusiasm than total score winners have been celebrated. The final round of Canegrate 2007 was quiet friendly play around the course, with two Germans playing a match for gold, and two Austrians playing for bronze in men’s competition.

Cup system would be more ideal for team competition than individual competition, for two reasons. Firstly, because each country can have only one national team, so there is no risk of quiet friendly matches between players of the same country. Not in the final, not in the semi-finals, not in any matches. Secondly, because luck has a smaller role in team rounds than in individual rounds.

A cup match of 18 minigolf lanes is statistically unstable, not far from a lottery. The round scores of all players go up and down, most of the time. The winning names could be drawn from a hat, in a live television show. But a combi round of men’s teams (6 players x 18 + 18 lanes) is statistically equal to a full individual competition of 12 rounds: 216 minigolf lanes played. One or two lucky hole-in-ones will not help much there.

However, it is the individual competition that was sacrificed as a cup show. And the holy team competition was left untouched. So we got some of the most quiet final rounds of minigolf history, both in team competition and in the individual cup matches.

However, many players from smaller countries have realized the possibilities of this new cup system, in the spirit of Ratatouille opportunism: Anyone can cook a medal for himself, in this playing system! The cup system has got many supporters. Opportunists, looking for an easy medal. But the cup system has also quite much opposition, most notably among the best players.

Names were collected on the Internet some months ago, in support of the total score system. (click here) A hundred people signed the page, with their real names, including many of the most famous players of minigolf history. How much is 100 names: is it few, or is it many? At this website we have a vote for “Player of the Year 2008”. It has not reached 100 votes yet — even though people can vote anonymously, without telling their name to anyone. 100 names is quite much for any online questionnaire about minigolf, anywhere.

The cup system, quietly decided in the winter of 2007, has divided the minigolf world in two camps: those who respect the system, and those who don’t. This is a new situation, a colder political atmosphere than before. Not a very positive step for minigolf as an international competition sport.

Cup competitions could be great fun, as a new tradition played in some other time of year, for a new cup champion title. But it is not so much fun as the one-and-only playing system, replacing the widely respected total score system in all major tournaments which are ever played on European ground.



The television

The dream of many minigolf leaders is to get minigolf on television. Or at least on live Internet broadcasts, and in downloadable competition videos of high quality. So they started thinking: Do people want to see cup matches, or a total score competition? Do people want to see us in jeans, in running suit, or in classic golf dress?

It is the ball that people want to see. Nothing else matters, if people cannot see the ball. The golden rule for all television sports is: choose a good colour for the ball. Use a dark colour on white background (as in ice hockey), or a light colour on dark background (as in golf). But we are playing brown beton lanes with brown Deutschmann balls, green felt lanes with green 3D M4, and white eternite lanes with white mg 3.

One of my favourite balls for felt minigolf is Wagner 37. (For those who started playing minigolf after 1980’s: it is an old ball, very old.) Wagner 37 is blue, but it has quite same darkness as the green felt carpet. Very poorly visible in video cameras, especially in direct sunshine.

I will never give up this favourite ball, with which I have won so many tournaments, unless a rule is written to ban it from me on felt. I guess that many players have quite similar feelings about their brown Deutschmann balls for beton. But they have some hope for the future: beton lanes are always painted, so it is possible to use other paint colours than the traditional dark brown.



The time

It is possible to produce quite nice minigolf videos, if we wait that some player somewhere uses a ball that can be actually seen in the video camera, against the colour of the minigolf lane. Then we must wait yet 70 seconds, while the player is aiming the shot and doing some ancient Chinese meditation.

If the television viewers did not switch to other channels during these meditative 70 seconds, our sponsors get some value for their money, as people watch the ball rolling on the minigolf lane. These exciting moments, looking at the ball moving on the lane, can sometimes last up to 5 minutes, on the most unfortunate lane designs such as beton no. 7 of Canegrate World Championships 2007, or the salto wheel of Steyr World Championships 2005. During these 5 minutes, all television viewers will change the channel, and your sponsors will kill you.

Minigolf can be a very slow game to watch. Basketball has a 30 seconds clock for throwing the ball to the basket, to save the audience from boring slow-play tactics. Minigolf, if meant for large audiences to watch, could have a 30 seconds time limit for concentrating for the shot (in playing position). And another 30 seconds time limit for the ball rolling on the lane — to spare the audience from boring ultra-slow playing methods, even when such are theoretically possible on some minigolf lanes.

In the modern age of webcams, protested cases can be checked from webcam recordings. (For those who are interested, I have many gigabytes video evidence of big star players breaking the rules.)



The basic instincts

Czech Minigolf Federation has been publishing a Miss Minigolf photo contest for some years. A provocative issue, certainly as controversial as the cup system. Because these minigolfers are not always wearing the official running suit and running shoes, for which our sport is so well known and universally admired.

One of our most basic instincts is to make some noise, when we are happy or excited. But in minigolf competitions we must learn to harness this basic instinct, in service of a greater good: the holy meditation session of some big star player, who is allergic to noise and requires total silence around himself.

This is one of the basic choices that a sport must make: should our competitions be noisy or quiet? Most sports are very noisy, but some sports require total silence, including golf and billiards. But these games tend to attract a more limited and elitistic audience than the big crowds making noise in their favourite sport stadiums.

Minigolf was more noisy in early 1990’s, when I played European Junior Championships a few times. It was the era of the “chain calls”, which are now banned in the rulebook. All 11 players and 4 coaches of a nation celebrated each hole-in-one of the team, shouting one after the other, close to the players of other teams, who were concentrating for a shot. It was psychological warfare, but not quite as dirty as Materazzi calling Zidane with dirty names to provoke him to take a red card. And the players didn’t tear each other from the shirt, like soccer players do. But nevertheless, WMF cleaned up this mess during the 1990’s, and turned the volume down in major tournaments.

I noticed the changed policies in Papendal 1999, when I was celebrating a hole-in-one at the terrace lane of the beton course. An older gentleman in referee shirt knocked on my shoulder, and slowly pronounced two words in German language: “Bitte, Ruhe.”



The fun

Minigolf has an extremely small ratio of competition players vs. all hobby players. Our game is great fun, but our competitions are not so great fun, in the opinion of the general public. And to be honest, not in the opinion of many competition players either.

WMF wanted to make our game more attractive for potential television audiences, so they banned jeans in international tournaments. The decision was a lame duck in many ways. Firstly, because this small rule is not enough to make our game essentially more stylish, in the opinion of the general public, while all the top players walk around with two big socks hanging between their legs.

Secondly, it is hard to believe that the general public is actually expecting a running suit and running shoes from minigolf players. Instead of stylish walking clothes, such as golfers have, for example. Nobody says that Tiger Woods is not a sportsman, because he wears straight black business trousers and elegant walking shoes.

In the recent years, the Athlete of the Year in Finland has been usually someone who only sits in a car and drives in circles. Our Athlete of the Year 2008 is a woman who won trap shooting at Beijing Olympics, wearing jeans. Nobody ever said that her game is not sport, because she is not running, and she is not wearing running shoes, a running suit and a running hat. I don’t see any reason why minigolf must be marketed as a running sport and not a walking sport.

The rulebook of WMF actually bans such rules, which this jeans rule now is. According to the rulebook of WMF, all new competition rules must be approved by the Delegates Conference, before the rule takes any effect. But this rule was claimed to be in force immediately after it was written, without waiting for approval of the Delegates Conference. According to WMF rulebook, the jeans rule was not valid in 2008, and will not be valid in the 2009 season either.

So many people here complain that minigolf players don’t follow the rules in competitions. Some complain that the referees don’t follow the rules in competitions. But those who make the rules, don’t follow the rules either, so why don’t we just burn the rulebook? This might be a show worth watching on television: Sweden vs. Germany, no rules whatsoever.



During the 2008 season, possibly as many as 50% of Finnish minigolfers wore jeans in an official competition. In any chosen tournament, probably some 30% of all participants played in jeans. But when WMF banned jeans in international competitions, some board members of Finnish Minigolf Federation began to eagerly wait for a green light to ban jeans also in our national competitions, to keep our rulebook perfectly harmonized with the latest international standards.

I am not sure that the end of this story will be fun to see.

But there are some necessary differences between having fun and playing an official competition. Some people think that drinking a beer or two would be a fun way to spend the evening. But this is not possible in official competitions, because of the WADA anti-doping rules. However, Stockholm World Championships 2011 is planning to have a beer tent for the public. Fortunately, Sweden has plenty of tea-totallers to patrol around the beer tent, so minigolfers will not have a chance to visit the tent unnoticed and unpunished.

I wish you a good New Year, and good luck. On 31 January we hear, how much we will need it.