Golf professionals teach that the player must keep his eyes exactly above the ball, when he aims a putt. For this reason, golf players usually stand very close to the ball when they putt, and they lean their chest forward, to have their eyes precisely over the ball.

Minigolf players rarely have their eyes exactly over the ball. In fact, it is often impossible for a minigolf player to have his eyes over the ball -- for example, when your ball has stopped on the other side of an eternite lane. To play the putt while having your eyes over the ball would require that you stand in the middle of the lane -- and that is forbidden by the rules.

Because minigolf players don't have their eyes over the ball, they suffer from some optical illusions, which golf professionals want to avoid with their strict "eyes over the ball" rule. Minigolf players sometimes see the hole in a different direction than where it actually is... an optical illusion! One of the minigolf.... Read more »

As you can see, the active php website of minigolfnews.com is coming back to life, after 5 months of simple life with passive HTML files only.

Some changes will probably happen in the ownership of the website during the coming weeks. Some new owners might join this mission of publishing minigolf news in English language, and inviting minigolfers from around the world to meet and share their news, comments and opinions. Read more »

WMF organized its first ever European adventure golf tournament, World Adventure Golf Masters, in England on 13-14 May 2011. WMF has finally decided to try something different than the three traditional European styles of minigolf courses, hoping to find a recipe that helps the game to grow outside of Europe, where the sport has grown very slowly in the past decades.

The date for the tournament was chosen to be 13-14 May 2011 — the same weekend when USA had the US Open major tournament, Sweden had Elitserien team league, and Austria had LM championship tournaments, which occupy practically all players of the country. This conflict of dates with other big tournaments gave a laissez-faire atmosphere to the event long before it started: careless planning, "whatever happens, let it happen". I got the impression that WMF did not seriously do its best to organize a big international event. (I don’t want to suggest that something so small can happen when WMF.... Read more »

My year 2010 summed up in photos:

Something historical happened at this year’s Finnish Felt Championships, which ended today.

Oskari “Favourite Killer” Vihervaara won it, but he won also last year, so that is not historical. Okay it is historical that a junior player wins our national championships two years in a row. That has never happened before.

I took a medal in men’s category, for the fifth year in a row (since 2005, excluding 2009 when I didn’t participate). But that is not historical either. Juha “Mister Felt” Wellenius took 12 medals in a row (!) in men’s competition, between years 1994 — 2006 (excluding 2002 when he didn’t participate). Now that I call a minigolf career.

But there was something historical, and most memorable, in the bronze medal that I won this year. It was the first time since 1974 that someone wins a medal at Finnish minigolf championships with one ball. Yes baby, I played the.... Read more »

We have reached March 2010 already, without any minigolf blogs written yet in this year.

Some of us have keenly followed the Winter Olympics in the past weeks. Ice hockey (the ice version of hockey), ice dancing (the ice version of dancing) etc. Where is the ice version of golf or minigolf? Nobody has suggested them for the Winter Olympics, I guess...

Winter Olympics have a more modern atmosphere than Summer Olympics: they have adopted many new youthful sports, such as snowboarding and freestyle skiing. Summer Olympics is a five times bigger event than Winter Olympics, and their routine excuse is "we cannot grow any bigger than this", when new sports ask to join the Summer Olympics. But Winter Olympics is not too big yet, they still have a lot of space for new ice or snow sports to join the action.

Jacques Rogge, the Chairman of International Olympic Committee, complained to the press that women's ice hockey is not competitive enough, the.... Read more »

I was 3rd at World Crazy Golf Championships 2009 in Hastings on 24-25 October. My wife didn't want to visit England in the cold and rainy season, so she and our baby took a flight to more sunny Ukraine instead. I promised to my wife that I will win this competition and bring home the 1100 EUR first prize. But I brought home only the 3rd prize 550 EUR (which is the biggest prize money in my playing career anyway), a bottle of Czech beer (which I drank on the way home), and a small window cleaner. The window cleaner was a joke from the organizer, because I was more active than other players to wipe the minigolf lanes dry before each shot, during the rainy Saturday.

I played the competition in ice hockey dress (shirt, helmet and shin pads), and I used a 2-piece putter that fits in a suitcase, when the two pieces are detached from each other. Unfortunately I forgot the other half of the putter at the hotel, as I packed my luggage in the hotel lobby after check-out. I must.... Read more »

Two years ago, on 6 September 2007, I wrote my "first" minigolf news articles for the minigolf2008.com website. "Germans triumph in Canegrate", "Uppsala wins Swedish Elitserien", and so on. Since then I have written a few hundred minigolf news articles, during these two years. Not every day, but more than once a week.

www.minigolf2008.com/en/news/archive_2.html

These were not my first minigolf news, of course. My first minigolf publication was the Finnish Minigolf Memo 1991, published more than 18 years ago. Much has happened in minigolf, and in news publishing technology, since I made this black-and-white front page (see the picture above) for my first minigolf publication in 1991, with Atari 512 computer.

One thing has not changed in these 18 years: news sometimes create conflicts of interest, or differences of opinion. The most controversial reports in my.... Read more »

On Sunday of this week, 16 August 2009, WMF Delegates Conference will decide the budget of years 2010–2011. Here I make a last-minute effort to explain some most important details, which many delegates will be uncertain about, what to decide and why.


WMF needs new member countries, but it also needs to keep the existing 40 member countries alive and interested, so that they will not die off. How will WMF budget 2010–2011 affect the existing 40 member countries of WMF?

Executive Committee has proposed an expensive budget, which would set new economical burdens on the member countries of WMF. Higher membership fees, smaller shares of sponsorship money, and also anti-doping costs might be paid by member countries.

I took it as a starting point in my own budget proposal, that no new economical burdens should be set on WMF member countries. I want to ensure that the existing 40 member countries will have economical chances to stay.... Read more »

World Games is often mentioned in the speeches of minigolf leaders. Also in the documents of WMF Delegates Conference 2009 in Odense. The next World Games will be in Cali, Colombia, 2013. And then somewhere else in 2017, 2021, and so on.


The arena: adventure golf courses only?

World Games organization has many strict rules, which would affect the nature of our game during this sports event. One important detail in World Games rules is the principle that no new structures should be built for the event. This would practically mean that a minigolf competition at World Games would be played on adventure golf courses, because other kind of minigolf courses don't exist in Cali, Colombia, or in other randomly chosen cities around the world.

A quote from World Games website: "Ideally, the.... Read more »

I wanted to write about WMF budget and elections in good time before the conference. But this was impossible, as Executive Committee delayed publishing the material, and never released it to me directly.

Better late than never: here are my thoughts about WMF budget 2010-2011 and the elections. Read more »

WMF has recently sent to all member countries the material for Delegates Conference (Odense, Denmark on 16 August 2009), including numerous proposals for changes in WMF rules, candidates for WMF elections, and other information.

WMF has not published the conference material on the Internet yet (like EMF did in 2008, see this page). Actually some members of WMF board have done their best to prevent this material from being discussed in public.

As minigolfnews.com reporter Hans Bergström tried to get a copy of WMF conference material from Executive Committee, Roger Cadosch required him to make a commitment that Hans will not show the material to anyone else, and he will not publicly discuss anything what is said in the conference material.

WMF Executive Committee has been unwilling to send any conference material to me, despite several requests, including an.... Read more »

In my next few blogs I will discuss some major issues related to WMF Delegates Conference, which will be held in Odense, Denmark somewhere around 16 August 2009 (I think).

Today I thought that I should publicly introduce some ideas for motions to WMF Delegates Conference, which in my opinion would improve minigolf as a global sport. Then I looked at the calendar, and noticed that today is the last day for sending any motions (if the date of conference is 16 August), and motions can only be sent by national federations. Never mind. Life is now, so why worry about tomorrow or yesterday?


JJM’s very unofficial motion 1: Licensing of golf balls

WMF gets nearly half of its annual budget, some 40,000 EUR, from the licenses of minigolf balls. But some countries (or individual tournament organizers) are playing minigolf with a golf ball only, refusing to allow special balls in their national competitions.

This situation has.... Read more »

Today is the birthday of Tetris computer game (as you will notice, if you open the Google search engine). Also minigolf is an evergreen bestseller theme in the computer game business. Always there, in every game console, and in every online game service.

I looked at some old stuff on my computer hard disk, and found a game sketch that I made in 2002. The game project was titled "Minigolf Championship Tour B-E-F Combi". In early 2000's it was a growing trend in international minigolf. All big countries moved to B-E-F combi in their national leagues. But today talking about "3 playing systems" is just so obsolete.

I changed the stinking project name to "Champions Minigolf version 0.0", and published it at www.minigolfnews.com/games/champions_minigolf/. The game includes three lanes, and it probably works with Internet Explorer only. (To function in other web browsers, some details in the.... Read more »

Our latest poll gives interesting information about the favourite playing systems of our website readers. Four playing systems clearly stand out as favourites of the international minigolf community: beton (27% of votes), adventure golf (20% with golf ball + 5% with special balls), felt (24% of votes) and eternite (17% of votes).

Our poll reveals that minigolfers whose favourite game is adventure golf, typically love to play with a golf ball, instead of special minigolf balls. This can be difficult to understand for many minigolfers: how can some people love a hard and rough golf ball, when we have all those smooth and soft special balls around! I try to give some possible reasons, so you can maybe learn to understand your fellow minigolfers, why they enjoy playing with a golf ball:

• The sweet simplicity of having a golf ball in pocket, and nothing else to worry about. A carefree and relaxed day out at the minigolf course. Hot or cold weather, rain....
  
  
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I would like to share my ideas about minigolf-related Internet services, which I will not do because I don’t have time for it. But maybe someone else gets inspired by these ideas, and will do some of these projects.


Minigolf search engine

When we planned minigolfnews.com website in November and December 2008, one of our ideas was to make a search engine in Google style, which would find all minigolf websites, all results, everything related to minigolf.

In the style of Google Photos, the search engine would also give clickable thumbnail links to minigolf photos, by keywords such as player’s name, competition, town, country, etc.

Erik is running the minigolfpics.com website, and many minigolf clubs or private persons have their own photo galleries somewhere on the Internet. Searching for photos of a specific person can be very difficult. A search engine would collect information from all known.... Read more »

Majority of minigolf competition players don’t speak English as native language. The situation is a bit funny: people in many countries talk and write about minigolf in English language, but everyone is talking with different terminology.

Here I explain my minigolf-English, and compare it to the minigolf terminology used by some others.

Hole (Target)

This is the place where the ball must go. It is usually at the center of...

Green (Target circle)

I use the word "green", it comes from golf. Rulebooks speak of "target circle", a term invented by Germans many decades ago, when all minigolf courses in their known universe had a green shaped like a symmetric circle.

Lane (Hole, Track)

American and British players say "hole", which comes from golf. I am allergic to confusing situations, where one word can mean many different things, so I use the word "lane", which comes from.... Read more »

Some people know that a Finnish minigolf company is for sale now, since some weeks already. And not just any company, but the market leader in Finland, operating since 1970’s. The owner wants to retire from business, because of health reasons.

The owner would gladly sell to me, but I don’t have so much money.

I would gladly work there as an employee, but the owner wants to quit and sell.

Some other minigolf companies would gladly buy it, but the owner doesn’t want to sell to those who have made offers, because of emotional reasons. Possibly some hard feelings, from the past years or past decades.

A funny stalemate. He might sell to some existing minigolf company, just not to those who have asked so far. Or maybe even to those, if time goes by and no other buyers show up anywhere...

I don’t have any moves left in this game, because I don’t have enough money to buy the company. My next move might possibly be to.... Read more »

As we arranged Nordic Championships 2009 in Tampere, we had a simple plan: cover all 18 lanes with webcams, so people can follow the competition live on Internet. All players, all lanes, all shots.

This plan didn’t work quite perfectly, but our webcams showed maybe 70% of all shots played in the competition. It was 70% success, or 30% failure. Depends on how you want to look at it. Visitor statistics of the webcams look like this:

1250 views:   webcam to lanes 1 and 15 – 18
1000 views:   webcam to lanes 10 – 15
 800 views:   webcam to lanes 2 – 3 and 9 – 10
 400 views:   webcam to lanes 6 – 8
 100 views:   webcam to lanes 4 – 5

How many different people looked at the webcams, is not known at the moment. My guess is somewhere around 250.

Our big plan, showing all 18 lanes in the webcams, worked 100% for some 5 hours.... Read more »

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.... Read more »

We got married with Julia on 17 March 2008. (The day was Monday, if you check from last year’s calendar.) The wedding ceremony was really a "Monday version": the secretary accidentally put the wedding documents in the wrong folder. One month later, when I visited a state office, they told me that I am not a married person. Then the secretaries started searching for the wedding document, and they found it in some folder X in shelf Z. Only after this incident the information about our marriage was registered in the computers of national population register.

A Russian guy asked my wife last week, if she is planning to play Nordic Champs 2009. She replied that this is not possible. Not because Ukraine is not invited, but because my wife is 6 months pregnant right now. Four first letters of the name have been decided already: the name will begin "Oliv-". Our beibushka should be born by the end of June. I feel a hand of doom hanging over my minigolf career.

I promised to share some photos of the MOS minigolf course that we are building to an amusement park in Finland. These photos were taken today and yesterday. (When we have finished the wall, we will put carpet on the lane, play some test shots, and then decide where we will make the hole, and where we will put obstacles.)

This lane is 10 m long, and its average width is 1.5 m. First 4 m is on level ground (9 cm above floor), then next 1 m is uphill rising 15 cm. Again 1 m level ground, and then a short uphill rising 4 cm to the green. Behind the green is a sand bunker in 4 cm downhill, and the last 50 cm behind the bunker is level ground.

The green is very small, smaller than the green of eternite lanes. Playing the ball to green from the start requires a very precise force (with enough power to climb the last uphill, yet without rolling to the sand bunker).

The obstacles for competition players will be very tight -- tighter than what the.... Read more »

Minigolf has much in common with billiards. Both games are quite young, quite popular as leisure activity, and not very popular as competition activity (in most countries). Money is a big difference between billiards and minigolf: all different forms of billiards have professional leagues, shown on television and supported by sponsors: snooker, pool, carom (carambole), Russian pyramid...

Like so many small sports, also billiards wants to be included in Olympic Games. Sounds quite easy for a sport so widely visible on satellite television channels, and richly supported by sponsors, but decades of negotiations have not opened the door to Olympic Games for billiards. Some rumours say that the problem is wrong kind of sponsors: billiards is commonly sponsored by cigarette and alcohol companies. Olympic Games wants to be connected with more neutral drinks and products.

One of the many conditions that Olympic Committee set for billiards associations, before.... Read more »

During this year I am designing and building an indoor minigolf course to an amusement park. We are talking about a MOS course, naturally, as this is the only playing system that is actually “designed” by the builder. The other playing systems follow the standard designs of WMF rulebook.

Many minigolf courses in tourist resorts look very beautiful and entertaining, with fantasy obstacles, dinosaur bones, or whatever. But when a competition player visits the minigolf course, he may be bored to death by the funny pipes and obstacles throwing the ball here and there, without any control of the player.

In competition minigolf, the player should have total control of the game. Good shots should give good scores, and bad shots should give bad scores. But to be honest, official competition courses often have some lanes where the player has little control of what happens on the green: beton lanes 3 and 4, some high felt lanes like gentleman with.... Read more »

We Europeans have played “World Championships” for two decades now. Mostly between European players only. At the same time, Americans have played their own Putting World Championships, between American players only.

The European form of minigolf was born in Europe, and the competition sport filled the entire continent during the 20th century. But the European version of minigolf has seen very little growth outside of Europe. Americans don’t play the European version of minigolf, which includes the special balls. Americans play with a golf ball only.

Why did the WMF version of competition minigolf get stuck inside Europe? Why are our “World Championships” visited by so few players from outside of Europe? (Budapest 2008 didn’t have any players from outside of Europe.)

There are certainly many answers to this question. One of the answers is that WMF major tournaments practically always include eternite or.... Read more »

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.... Read more »