Lane golf

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lane golf is a smaller variant of golf . It is not played on large grass pitches, but on paved lanes and basically corresponds to the last stroke on the golf green with which the ball is putted into the target hole. Nevertheless, there are a few systems with a lawn, e.g. B. in Baden-Baden . The aim of the game is identical, namely to get the ball into the hole with as few strokes as possible. Although lane golf is the official collective name for the standardized lane systems mini golf, miniature golf, cobigolf, star golf and felt golf, the colloquial term mini golf has established itself for all systems. Orbit golf belongs asSkill game for precision sports . It is a very technically oriented sport where, in addition to experience and training, the quality of the equipment also has a major influence on the result.

history

The golf course developed from the golf sport, which has its beginnings in the 15th century. From there it took over the final phase on each lane, putting in the last few meters, and varied this stroke with various obstacles between the tee point and the hole. Therefore there is only one type of club for lane golf, but numerous balls with different running properties.

Track golf course on the roof of the Eden Hotel in Berlin, 1930

Fantasy tracks with a wide variety of obstacle structures appeared in England and the USA from the 1920s . As piste golf, putt-putt golf, small golf, mini golf, etc., they enjoyed increasing popularity as inexpensive leisure activities. Initially only built near real golf courses for practice purposes, these systems with their fantasy structures spread increasingly and were also exported to Europe. These facilities differed greatly, both in terms of the surface on which the game was played and in terms of the obstacles. This was rather detrimental to widespread use.

Minigolf Ascona , the oldest standardized course (Bongni system), opened in 1954

In 1950 the Swiss Paul Bongni submitted a patent application for a standardized variant of lane golf, which was approved in 1953. The first miniature golf course was built in Ascona in the winter of 1953/54 , as the second standard system miniature golf with the first course in 1956 in Planten un Blomen in Hamburg. There have been several approaches to standardization, but it was only Bongni who established his model. His version is the mini-golf, which is played in international competitions and is in Europe the most widespread, while traditionally dominate fancy equipment in the US that there among other things also as mini golf or miniature golf are called.

The standardization should theoretically make it possible to tackle each lane with an ace, ie with a single stroke. In miniature golf, the design and order of all 18 holes are determined; a miniature golf course consists of 18 holes in any order from a selection of 25 standardized holes, only the 'Blitz' and 'Right Angle' holes must be available. From 1960 Cobigolf was added with its typical, croquet-like gates to be played through between tee and finish as a lane system, in 1963 star golf with the eponymous star-shaped end circle of the last lane and in the 1990s finally felt golf from the Scandinavian region with felt underground, wooden bands and octagonal end circle. In 1959 the first European mini golf championship took place in Gardone Val Trompia, Italy. Since 1991 mini golf world championships have been held every two years. The first individual world champions were Miranda Graf for women and Raffael Nösberger for men (both from Switzerland).

Felt golf and miniature golf course (back) in Malmö

For the operator, lane golf has the advantage that it does not take up as much space as a real golf course; for the players to theoretically get by with a racket and a (universal) ball. The course operator lends this basic equipment for a fee. The first championships in Germany were also held with a single golf ball, before club players began to experiment with existing balls of all kinds and edit them in order to change their running properties and improve the game result. After all, balls with the desired properties were produced in smaller series, initially in private households, and since around 1970 increasingly by commercial suppliers. An essential role was played by the fact that in lane golf - unlike in golf - it is often played indirectly, i.e. via the boards, which requires different properties from the ball used. Establishing club work, professional training and improving the racket and ball material led to a revolution in results as early as the late 1970s. During this time, the theoretically possible best performance, a round with 18 strokes, was also achieved in practice, albeit not on concrete tracks. In 1991 a ball was named for the first time after a successful representative of lane golf, the first world champion Miranda Graf, which subsequently set a precedent, so that today numerous balls are named after international and national champions. In the meantime, in addition to its continued popularity as a leisure activity, with an estimated 15 million visitors per year on German courses, lane golf is based on a solid foundation of clubs that compete against each other in competitions from regional to world championship level.

System bat with focus sight and system ball

Professional golf course golfers (although the name is misleading - club players who earn their living with this sport are not known) bring some special rackets, usually a maximum of 2, and several hundred balls onto the course, in order for different play variants of a lane, temperature fluctuations, wetness , different substrates (Eternit, concrete, felt) and the small deviations that remain between two systems despite all normalization, to find the one ball with the best ace chance.

The already large number of ball material is often "prepared" before playing on a lane, i. H. Adapted to the external weather situation by cooling down in the refrigerator or in the thermal case until the body is warmed up. Some of the balls popular with players achieve a certain popularity, which is reflected in their names: Herscheider, Catenaccio, Nuss, Lumumba, Bimbo, dead dog, Turbo or Tomato. Popular lane golfers are often namesake for special lanes, e.g. For example, in the felt golf department there is a track called Tronix after the nickname of a well-known Austrian golf player, or special strokes. The extremely difficult topspin shot on the “Brücke” miniature golf course is known as “Janacek”.

In the case of golf clubs, changes to the original type, similar to the putter, have become established in order to make the game more predictable. These include sight lines, changing the center of gravity or attaching a rubber that regulates the time and eases the effect .

Miniature golf and miniature golf differ not only in the material of the playing surface and in the obstacle structures, the concrete lanes of miniature golf are also longer (12 m at 125 cm width), which also requires different playing techniques and balls than the shorter miniature golf courses made of Eternit plates (6.25 m, 90 cm wide), which on top of that are not allowed to be entered. To this day, these two are the most widespread among the standardized track systems. In 1980 Mathias Kaiser estimated the number of standardized golf courses worldwide to be over 5000, of which miniature golf and miniature golf account for around 90%. Miniature golf is ahead because it is cheaper to manufacture and more economical in terms of space.

The equivalent of the handicap in lane golf is the "cut". Good players play an average of 22 strokes over a season of miniature golf. This means that with 18 lanes on an average of four lanes, the ball is not sunk with the first stroke, while on the much more difficult, because longer lanes of the mini golf department, an average of 30 strokes is often enough to win a tournament .

Lane golf systems

Mini golf system concrete

Minigolf according to the Bongni system has, with the exception of the 25-meter-long long-distance slope, twelve-meter-long and 1.25-meter-wide standardized concrete lanes, which, including obstacles, must be laid out in the prescribed order. The tee mark on mini golf courses is always a circle with a diameter of 30 centimeters in the middle of the boards at the beginning of the course. The center point is 40 cm away from the beginning of the track and is marked by a circular marking with a maximum diameter of eight centimeters. The path delimitation is formed by flat iron or pipe bands. The obstacles are structures made of concrete or natural stone.

Eternit mini golf system (miniature golf)

Minigolf / Eternit has standardized lanes 6.25 m long and 0.90 m wide. These consist of fiber cement panels ( Eternit ) that are laid in iron angle frames. There are a total of 25 standardized mini golf courses with or without obstacle structures. The tee is always the entire tee box. A ball that has remained lying may be placed 20 cm from the curbs and 30 cm from the obstacle.

From the score (game result), miniature golf is the system with the lowest number of strokes to be expected. Depending on the selectivity of the system, an average number of strokes of 20 to 22 strokes per round (even less for national or international championships) is necessary for a front placement.

Cobigolf

There are two different types of cobigolf: large cobigolf and small cobigolf. Either way, the player must pass the ball through a gate or two before it can be holed. Groß-Cobi means concrete tracks with the same dimensions as in mini golf. Here too there is one long stroke - sometimes two (e.g. on Baltrum ). With the Klein-Cobi the lanes are made of Eternit plates and have the same dimensions as with the miniature golf.

Star golf

Star golf is also played on concrete lanes. They are 8 m long and 1 m wide. The end circle has a diameter of 2 meters. The obstacles are the same on every facility, only the order can vary. The tracks are limited by pipe strips. The last train gave the system its name. Here the end circle is laid out in the form of a five-pointed star, the target hole is made on a small hill. The player may enter the lane during play and attack. In North Rhine-Westphalia alone there are 11 different star golf clubs, but besides Germany these can also be found in neighboring countries, especially Austria and Holland. Heinrich Ullrich (born June 27, 1920) - both of them Hagen Hohenlimburg - is the inventor and in almost all cases (co-) builder together with his neighbor Erich Baudach. The first star golf course is located at Hohenlimburg Castle in Hagen. Championships are only held in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Felt golf

Felt golf: target circle hole, universal club and typical system ball

The felt web systems come from the Scandinavian region. A felt golf course consists of 18 lanes that can be selected from 32 standardized types of obstacles. The length of the track can be between 9 and 18 meters, the width is 90 cm. The “target circle” is octagonal and can have a width of 1.80 m or 2.40 m. The boards are made of wood, meanwhile partly made of stainless steel due to weather conditions in Central Europe. The playing area is covered with a carpet-like felt. The ball is played from a teeing plate at the beginning of the course.

Adventure golf

Adventure golf is a variant of lane golf that originated in the USA. The lanes are usually made of green artificial turf, are not standardized and contain many unusual elements such as bridges, caves, hills, etc. In contrast to the standardized mini golf courses, the maximum number of points allowed per lane is not limited to seven; many lanes require more strokes. Many adventure golf courses are embedded in a pretty landscape by landscape gardeners. Popular objects are e.g. B. artificial streams and waterfalls; the individual tracks can then only be reached via bridges. The first facility of this type in Europe was built in the Strandbad Wedau / Duisburg.

Black light mini golf

Since around 2010, black light miniature golf courses have increasingly been opened in Germany . These leisure facilities are located in halls that are only illuminated with UV light , which means that the objects provided with special colors fluoresce in bright colors .

See also

literature

  • Nunzia Conte: La guerra del golf. Ascona rivendica la paternità del primo campo di minigolf in tutto il mondo , in: Eco di Locarno, May 13, 1991, p. 12 ( digitized version )
  • Mathias Kaiser: The great golf course book. Everything you need to know about miniature golf and miniature golf ; Frankfurt am Main: Sport-und-Freizeit-Verlag, 1981; ISBN 3-88759-027-9 .
  • Michael Seiz: Mini golf. From leisure fun to competitive sport ; Simmern: Böhmer, 2002; ISBN 3-00-005487-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nunzia Conte: La guerra del golf. Ascona rivendica la paternità del primo campo di minigolf in tutto il mondo , in: Eco di Locarno, May 13, 1991, p. 12 ( digitized version ); [1] ; Contribution to the 60th birthday of the mini golf course in Ascona on www.minigolfverband.ch ( Memento from January 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).
  2. Austrian Bahnengolfverband: Minigolf (Wed) (PDF file; 84 kB); in: Rules of the ÖBGV, 2008 edition, pp. 44–54.
  3. ^ Austrian Golf Association: Miniature Golf (Ma) (PDF file; 925 kB); in: Rules of the ÖBGV, 2008 edition, pp. 55–69.
  4. Austrian Railway Golf Association: STAR GOLF (recognized by WMF and ÖGBV) MOS (PDF file, 682 kB); in: Rules of the ÖBGV, edition 2016, pp. 113–122.
  5. Austrian Golf Association : Swedish felt tracks (PDF file; 618 kB); in: Rules of the ÖBGV, 2008 edition, pp. 68–92.