I can’t believe it is June and shortly I’ll be teeing off my competition circuit for 2022. Things have been so busy the past nine months or so that I didn’t even do my normal wrap up of 2021 at the end of the year. Thank you to the folks who have been keeping the blogs going and for those sending in articles making it easy for me to keep the news updated. It’s been a great help!

I had thought about turning this post into a big recap but pretty much everything of importance can be found in one of my more detailed blogs. The TL;DR of 2021 for me competitively is that it started out slow and inconsistent but finished with videoing a course record, a tournament win and my first money placement in the USPMGA Masters.

The first few months of 2022 have been crazy trying to get things wound up at the WMF for the return of big tournaments, getting the AMA off the ground and making an unsuccessful attempt at running a major tournament. The latter, unfortunately, meant that for the second year in a row I missed the U.S. Open, this time in Tennessee on a course I really want to play someday.

Unlike 2021, where a missed U.S. Open meant I didn’t play a tournament until August, I do have one coming up on Sunday at an old haunt of mine. U.S. player Gary Shiff is bringing back a tournament at the Odetah campground in Bozrah, CT. This is a Harris course where Gary used to hold various Odetah Fall Classic tournaments as well as other minor tournaments and leagues over the years. In my capacity as the Putting Penguin, we also held a tournament there for two years before switching over to running the Matterhorn International Pro-Am. Between all of this I’ve played in over a dozen competitive events at this location, so it is definitely a setting I am familiar with. The two curveballs this year are that I haven’t played the course in about 8 years (until a spot of practice last week) and they just recarpeted the holes a few weeks ago. This included changing up some of the rough/sand areas that are in play for some of the holes.

After three hours of practice, this is my takeaway from the current state of the course. A vast majority of the shots I used to play are still the best ones to play. However, the slowness of the new turf is making the course play about 2-4 strokes more difficult because of some of the more limited rollouts, particularly on the hard dog-leg/”U” shaped holes. On those holes there also aren’t many ways to work around that speed without taking very high risk shots, so you’re dealt with having to make some long second shots. It is slightly offset by the fact that some of the more tricky breaks have been leveled out with the more robust turf, especially on longer putts. Holes 7, 9 and 12 are where we’ll most likely see a lot of 3s, with holes 2, 5, 6 (assuming we are moving the rock as has been mentioned), 10, 14 and 17 giving the best chances at an ace. The rest of the holes should be 2s but have a lot of opportunities more for dropped shots then aces you can pick up.

My prediction then is that the average round score for the winner will be around 39/40. The weather is supposed to be very good for the tournament so conditions will be ideal for some consistent rounds.

My prediction for my own rounds/finish is more cloudy. I won’t be getting there as early as I would like on Sunday due to other obligations so my practice will be limited. I felt good after my time pretty much alone on the course last week, but I definitely won’t have as many reps on the holes as I normally would like. The good part is - most people also won’t have a lot of reps on the course either given the timing of the carpeting. There will be a lot of the good local putters playing, plus I’ll have the bonus of my Puttcast co-host Tom Loftus playing in the pro division as well as my co-Penguin Mandy up from Maryland. I even hear some of the folks from Maine are coming down. With that type of field, I think it’s ripe for someone like Justin Seymour, Highlighter Novicki or myself to take the top spot given our experience in tournaments against many of the same folks.

Other betting odds/predictions for the tournament:

-Over/under winning score: 160 (I’ll take the under)
-Over/under aces in 4 rounds for winner: 7 (I’ll take the under)
-Over/under personal aces in 4 rounds: 6 (I’ll take a push)
-Winning number of aces in the aces-only round: 4
-Winning margin: 2 strokes
-At least one personal round without an ace: yes


The views expressed in this blog are solely the views of the writer and do not represent the World Minigolf Sport Federation (WMF), Minigolfnews.com or any other organization that the writer may be associated with unless expressly stated in the blog.