The best minigolf countries usually make a heavy investment of money and time for major championships, to ensure that the players and coaches can reach their full potential in the competition. Germany, Sweden, Austria and Switzerland usually practice some 20 days for a major tournament, if we count the Nations Cup, additional training camps during the summer, and the full team arriving to the courses two weeks before the tournament.

In Odense 2009 nobody can practice more than 5 days at the minigolf courses. Nobody knows which playing lines or balls will be the best ones. This will be a great opportunity to under-achieve, to learn the minigolf courses less than perfectly, without reaching your full potential as a minigolf player.

As the training days are so limited in Odense 2009, and nobody has any previous experience of the newly-installed minigolf courses, it is reasonable to speculate that it is a strategic advantage to have evening training session on the first practice day (Friday 14 August). These countries can save some hours of time wasted in random testing of balls and playing lines, as they can sit in the audience and learn from the random tests done by the first training group on Friday morning.

The practice groups are not decided by lottery, if anyone wonders about that. They are simply decided.



Yesterday I played in a minigolf competition. This is news in itself, because I play very seldom, only two or three times per year. After the long winter away from minigolf competitions, I practiced 5 hours at the felt course, and then played a competition of 4 rounds. I scored 39 - 36 - 36 - 28.

In Odense 2008, you will want to see this same improvement in your scores. Before the tournament. Not during it. But you will have quite limited training time, just like I had for this competition. And you cannot get any advance information about the optimal playing lines, as I got from the local players for this competition. In Odense 2009 you will have a great opportunity to under-achieve, without reaching your full potential as a minigolf player, like I did in this competition.

"Repetitio mater studiorum est", repeating is the mother of learning. Limited training time can cause embarrassing surprises in the competition. You pracice a lane a few times, and everything seems to be going fine. You carefully memorize the aiming mark, how you need to play the lane. Then in competition you aim at the same mark, but the ball goes too much to the left all the time. Or too much to the right. On felt courses, being unsure about the aiming mark can be an absolute disaster, as so many of the lanes are potential 7-point jackpots.

Minigolf players cannot hit exactly the mark where they are aiming at. There is always some small variation in the direction of shots. On 12 m long felt courses, a very good player can hit the optimal playing line +/- 10 centimeters to left or right. Less perfect players can hit the optimal playing line +/- 20 cm or 30 cm to left or right.

When you have very limited training time, it can happen that your few practice shots were "-15 cm to left" of your aiming mark. Then in competition you hit "+0 cm" or "+15 cm" of the aiming mark, and the ball goes too much on the right all the time. If this happens at a 7-point jackpot lane on felt, you are so dead. Good luck trying to adjust your aiming mark during the tournament — as I did in the competition yesterday — to reach your full potential as a minigolf player.