A mini golf course is characterized by two things: loving decoration and general friendliness, at least for the duration of the game. An appreciation.

Mini golf course in Domburg Photo: imago

The gender gap always arrives at some point. The crucial difference between the sexes. In each installation. This is the track where the ball goes over a cone and falls into a kind of suspended landing net. If a couple, man and woman, is going to play mini golf in the phase of an ultra-fresh infatuation, this is exactly the path that presents itself.

Long-term private observations, whether in Neukölln, Füssen or Hamburg, show that men are able to correctly place the ball in the net on the second or third attempt after a test shot (“Ah, it doesn't work like that! “).

But women, even if they are ambitious, have to give up their hopes of winning or at least not being embarrassed… they simply don't hit, they run towards the ball with the bat, which is too loose, which then dies in front of the bowling alley. or somewhere in the nirvana of discounts created around the railway.

So I tell a woman whose boyfriend wasn't even looking at her: Just hit the ball like you were going to punch your boyfriend hard. Well, that was, of course, an invitation to violence, even if it was simulated in the game, but she stood up, strengthened, as they say, sighed slightly, her body tensed a little – and hit the ball on the target. So cleverly her friend was simply amazed.

When it comes to mini golf, everyone is equal

Gender problem, well resolved in its spirit. In other words: mini golf is always more than 18 holes with different obstacles, angles and difficulty in getting the ball into the hole. Until then, they stand in the way: planters, mazes, hills, seesaws, volcanoes.

In reality, minigolf has never been taken very seriously as a sport, and it doesn't have to be, although in Germany (and other countries) there is a system of associated clubs where people don't want to know exactly how the annual members meet. . 'The meetings are underway. But there are statutes, detailed rules and everything that makes an association and its clubs volunteer-intensive.

There are even higher leagues for this game, which was invented in 1954 in the Swiss town of Ascona, a paradise for German tourists and the site of a vital reform center at Monte Verità since the late 19th century. Traben-Trarbach had the first minigolf course in the Federal Republic. They were eventually found in all outdoor municipal swimming pools until the 1970s.

Popular sports minigolf

At one time, mini golf was just for kids, especially since golf has attracted public attention since the neoliberal decades. Franz Beckenbauer, Boris Becker and many other football and tennis stars suddenly appeared as golfers, as if they had finally managed to get out of the depths of their sporting performances by taking long walks with breaks.

Golf: that was and is an excessive overexploitation of natural spaces practiced by the circles of the upper bourgeoisie and which attracts the highest petty-bourgeois milieu.

The truth is that the real “Volxsport” is minigolf, and nowhere is this better demonstrated than at Neukölln's Hertzbergplatz, an epicenter in this capital district where all kinds of scenes mix. Here hipsters have fun, birthdays are celebrated and it is said that weddings were celebrated there. Casual is beautiful.

Eclectically decorated

Does it matter that no one is better at regular mini golf? Uncertain. Seemingly easy paths suddenly become monsters of trouble, but maybe next time will be better, which is what everyone hopes.

Both at the Hertzbergplatz facilities and at Hammer Park in Hamburg: the courts are eclectically decorated, they are cozy facilities that are not oriented towards high-level sports. You can see his amateur passion for DIY.

Children play with their grandparents and mothers, and one guest, sitting on the porch swing, sips her evening coffee before returning to her daily life.

Play without airs

Here the whole community comes together: mini golf course in Domburg Photo: imago

Curiously, there are also ashtrays on the tables that invite you to stay and eat: consideration for those sectors of the clientele (who mostly live in the surrounding area) who do not have the strength (or do not want to have it) to continue. the healthy-vegan lifestyle of “study people” (as the regular guest says). This minigolf, like probably all the others, thrives on affability, not on differences and narcissism in forms of expression.

From time to time you see people from another Neukölln. Not poor immigrants or people with refugee status, but rather, culturally quite diverse, the average citizen of New Colony who likes to play mini golf and displays none of the trappings and graces of the popular lifestyle.

But often they are also nerds, people who take it seriously here at minigolf. They can be recognized by the caution with which they travel the route, with heavy double-belly briefcases in their hands. However, there is no paper there, but balls and brooms, large and small, including folding ones.

Like, “Man, don't be mad.”

One person even brought out a small vacuum cleaner to suck up the first fallen leaves of late summer: kind gestures that don't seem pretentious. But as we have already mentioned: in minigolf you hardly improve, or you only improve a little.

The landing net track, which only hits cleanly hit balls, at some point lost its horror (“well, then seven” hits, which have to be recorded on the scoresheet, ruin the entire result).

It's like “Don't be angry”: just a game and yet like the seriousness of life: somehow friendly, friendly, non-toxic, trans-environmental.

Miniature golf, there's nothing wrong with it, after grueling years of waking up excited, it's simply: cooling off, together.