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Team Britain: Kellard will travel alone to Odense
24 Jul 2009 at 08:59 | Published by: JJM | Views: 9381 | News search
Keith Kellard in Canegrate, Italy. (Photo by Kevin Botto 2007)
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2009 was hoped to be a breakthrough year for British minigolf getting active in other playing systems than MOS (adventure golf and crazy golf), with WMF-funded training camps in Austria and in Great Britain.
But one of the main goals of the WMF-funded project, to see a full British team at World Championships 2009 in Odense, will not become reality. Keith Kellard is the only British player who has confirmed his plans to play the tournament, with Austrian Willy Bauer as his coach.
Only some weeks ago British players were still planning to send a full team to the competition, which was also one of the conditions for receiving money from WMF. Economical support was optimistically expected from private sponsors and from the British Minigolf Association.
One player retreated from the team because of medical reasons, some sponsors changed their attitude as it seemed that Britain will not get a full team, and the conservative wing of British Minigolf Association leadership promised only as much economical support as is customary in any typical year, while the team candidates had hoped for an increase in funding.
As the negotiations about funding delayed further and further, the players started feeling insecure about their travel plans, and finally the entire project of a British team to Odense collapsed in a sour atmosphere, with criticism exchanged between the two sides of British minigolf politics, the conservative supporters of traditional British playing systems and the liberal supporters of international playing systems.
One British player will be seen in Odense anyway, which is more than what 40% of WMF member countries will do on the international scene during this year 2009.
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Comments (16)
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MrX (Andy Exall) |
28 Jul 2009 at 13:32 | The good thing about playing golfball only on any course would be the skill needed to play certain shots where for example, a completely dead ball would be much better. It would be a great equaliser & place the emphasis on shots you play rather than ball choice you make. I'm not in any way against having masses of balls, I have quite a few myself, but it would be a good common ground for US, UK & Europeans to get together. |
JJM (John Mittler) |
28 Jul 2009 at 08:34 | It is true that a golf ball is not always the most interesting possible ball for some adventure golf lane. This is a minigolf course designing issue: if the course is designed to include various and interesting playing options specifically for a golf ball, then so be it. But if the course designer has not thought about this, then the course probably has some lanes where a golf ball is an uncomfortable, even annoying tool to play with. |
AS (André Silva) |
27 Jul 2009 at 23:55 | As we came to the part of talking about each ones likes ad dislikes, I can tell you than when I started playing minigolf some 30 years ago, I had a bag with 4 or 5 balls. Today I have hundreds of them and I like it better now. Having to make the correct ball choice is part (a big part) of the fun. Although I've played adventure golf with a golf ball only and it's fun to play too, but at some lanes when you're used to the special balls you can't help to think:"here, that particular special ball would be perfect". |
Sealand (Anthony Pope) |
27 Jul 2009 at 22:31 | I agree with Andy. Playing with a golf ball only is no problem. In order to make this happen ALL sides would have to make some sort of concession.
In fact, I like playing lanes where a golf ball is the ball of choice.
Anyway, lets see what happens... |
MrX (Andy Exall) |
26 Jul 2009 at 11:07 | Why not have the WMF Adventure Golf WC's as a competition using a golf ball only? That way would at least make things equal regarding equipment, then it would be down to putting only rather than a correct ball choice. |
JJM (John Mittler) |
25 Jul 2009 at 19:53 | How do you gather Americans to play eternite, if they have a steel putter and have never in their lives seen any other minigolf balls than a golf ball? This is a cultural gap that is difficult to cross to both directions. |
AS (André Silva) |
25 Jul 2009 at 19:27 | Who knows if one day we will have a minigolfnews.com adventure golf/eternite tournament to gather all the minigolf fans. |
MrX (Andy Exall) |
25 Jul 2009 at 17:52 | You only have to look at the photos of the Askims 2008 competition to see that people do want to play adventure golf John! Look at the smiles compared to the seriousness you see at WMF competitions, players enjoy it! Also, why not start with a World Championship Andre? At least it would attract foreign players who would want to try to be a World Champion. There is room for a World Champion on every playing surface or style of course so I really don't see why not. To insist on only one World Minigolfing Champion is not logical either, look at Boxing, lots of World Champions at every weight & also different organisations have different champion's belts, so there are very many!
We in the UK are fortunate that the British Open is relatively well supported by foreign players, again this year I believe there are even more coming over. The World Crazy Golf Championships however, only have a very few but very welcome foreign players & we like to see them & hope for more to come. I believe firmly that if the WMF had an official World Adventure Golf Championship it would be very popular, I know some will refuse to try it but I also know some adv golf players don't want to try Eternit etc. If Nifo brought a course over to the UK I would be very keen to give it a try, but I prefer MOS because that's what we play, which is also why I know most Europeans don't want to play MOS because it's not what they play.
Will the WMF take the plunge and organise an Adventure Golf WC? Sadly I don't think so. |
AS (André Silva) |
25 Jul 2009 at 12:43 | Why should we start with world championships in adventure golf? I think it would be easier to start with international tournaments (eventually sponsored by the WMF) in combi courses (adventure/european). I don't know if there are many courses where it can be done, but it would be a way to "break the ice", and get the best european players to compete on all surfaces. |
JJM (John Mittler) |
24 Jul 2009 at 20:21 | In our sport the big problem is that Europeans don't want to play adventure golf, which is the only playing system that has a potential to immediately grow to many new countries (because of existing adventure golf courses in practically all countries of the world). The way of least resistance might be to play separate championships.
I am not sure how logical your claim is, Hans, considering that nearly all Olympic individual sports have several different championship competitions within the same basic sport, such as running 100 m, 200 m, 400 m, 800 m --- or shooting with a rifle standing, from ground, skeets...
What I mean is that having many champions does not seem to bother these sports in any way from getting attention in the media. Not during world or Olympic championships anyway. | Add comment | To add comments, you need to log in.
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