Hello Dear Reader!

As this is my first post here, I would like to introduce myself to you. My name is Balazs Tompa, I’m Hungarian, and 29 years old (for a few more weeks). I already have a long history of blogging, I started to take it seriously in 2010 and that was a Hungarian poker blog. It’s still alive, although I’m posting way less than before and I don’t really have any poker-related content there, as I stopped playing regularly.

My main sport was always been table tennis, I was playing since I was 10-11 years old. Sadly in 2015, I’ve got a shoulder injury, and I couldn’t find a solution for that. I continued playing for a while longer, but in the end, it was too painful to play competitively, it forced me to give up. For a period of time, I felt really empty as I didn’t have any kind of replacement. Until the moment I found minigolf tournaments.

Minigolf is a game that I already enjoyed before I discovered the tournaments. I played a lot with my wife, we didn’t really stay to play the same courses again and again, we always preferred to try more and more places. Of course, we competed with each other, but I was wondering if there are tournaments to play as well. So in 2020 after some searching, I found some information about the World Crazy Golf Championships… which was canceled due to covid restrictions. Then I found the BMGA and the Cambridgeshire and Essex Open, and luckily it was close to me, so that was the first event that I tried. It wasn’t a huge success for me as I was 36th out of 40 players, but I really enjoyed it. Then I came for the next event… then for the next. Now I finished my first full season with BMGA and I’m a regular player on the tour. It really gave me back the feeling of what I lost before with table tennis.

Highlights of the last 1,5 years:
Last year my personal best was 38 (Midlands Open) and with my wife Zita, we joined to the Welsh Minigolf Club.

Cardiff Open:
I made my first under-par round ever (35) and I was tied 2nd after the first round, at the end I just missed out on the top10 and the category 3 podium by 1 point.

World Crazy Golf Championships (novice):
I had a solid, consistent performance (38,39,39) and it earned me a place in the final for the top18 players. With even some bad luck I managed to get again a 38 and finish 13th. It’s not bad out of 82 players.

BMGA Club Championships:
Undoubtedly the most successful event this year. With the Welsh club, we won the tournament, and as a big plus, we didn’t lose a single game. The weather wasn’t great all the weekend, but apart from that, I loved it.

BMGA Singles Matchplay:
It was Zita’s moment as she won her first-ever matchplay against a higher-ranked player.

British Championships:
Overall I really enjoyed Margate (except hole 11 haha). I had a round of 35 for the 2nd time and I just missed out on the aces prize by 1.

Star City Open:
I’ve hit a 33 what is my new personal best. Hopefully next year it could be even lower. :)

About the nickname: In poker, I used another one, but as someone’s already got almost the same I changed it for minigolf. So instead of that, I chose „The Magician”. It comes from a colleague, who gave me this name for finding quickly everything that was needed. Also, it reminds me of the club tournament that we won under the name of Welsh Wizards.

That’s all for the first time, thank you for reading it. :)