Dear Minigolf Friends in this blog post I will try to do a short analyze of 2009 in the Portuguese minigolf and in my minigolf player life side.
This year happened in Portugal for the first time the SEC. It was organized in Lamego, where in 2000 the WMF staff consider to happened the best organization JEM until that time. In 2009 some problems may happened with the organization but the sportive part was incredible. With a new and easy concrete course, some world records were beaten, the Italian men team won once again (with a huge support of the Portuguese people) and the Swiss players showed great skills in matchplay part of the game. The Portuguese team was successful too, In the way that the objectives were achieved. I was part of that new experience (for the first time Portugal had a team of senior players) being coach of the team. It was nice but risky to choose 3 coaches with less than 20 years old to coordinate a senior team but in the end I think that no one regretted that decision. Because of some bets and jokes that young coaches team had to walk down and up the huge Lamego’s stairs, but with satisfaction, knowing that 2 of our players would be in the finals in the next day.
In the internal competitions, the national team competition was won by the Clube Minigolfe do Porto against the expectancies of the majority in hard “battle” in Lamego, individually it was the year of André Silva that won all the major tournaments (national individual, national teams, regional individuals, regional team and Portuguese Cup).
There were decided some major changes to 2010. The national championship in the last years was played in 3 weekends, 6 rounds each. Since 2010 it will be played in 4 Sundays, 4 rounds each. The decisions was taken with the excuse of saving money, but let’s see what the future will say about this model.
Personally, I would like to point out the invitation to be a minigolfnews’ reporter in the way that this was an opportunity to show how the minigolf happens in Portugal and my 4 months experience in Finland. I was there as a student but I could also play some minigolf, for that I had the great support of the Manse RG team. They were amazing with me, specially helping me to join my team in Vaduz and then coming back to Finland. Thank you all.

To conclude, I just want to wish a 2010 even better that 2009, for my team, for the Portuguese minigolf, for all of you (minigolf friends) and for minigolfnews.