WINTER FENZY NIGHT TOURNAMENT 2016
The bright sun streaming through the window of my Amsterdam hotel room wakes me up. It’s a great day for urbangolf … I can feel it. The nice weather is an unexpected surprise because the night before had been so cold and damp that we’d spent most of it in coffee shops. As Saturday became Satur-night, we made our way to the student café Cambridgebar in Utrecht, the rendezvous point for the event participants. Some of the players were already there and having a good time. There were over 50 urbangolfers from over 5 countries including: Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Pizza and beer kept the crowd in high spirits. The organizers gave a little speech about each of the 9 holes, then the 2nd ever Frenzy Night Tournament could begin! Wait … something was missing. Where was the signal? Suddenly, some incredibly loud fireworks lit up the student-less square and we knew it was officially game on!
Hole 8 - Start from a parking rooftop
All 9 holes were very well planned and far from easy, not just because it was dark. Hole 1 was a long dog-leg and the target was a sign. Hole 2 started with a putt to nudge the ball down a descent and then required a chip to get it into a little plastic wading pool. In between holes we indulged in either ice-cold beer or warm Glühwein, which was nice because it was nighttime in January after all. All the holes were technically quite difficult and it was challenging to keep our scores low, but some managed it. Stiblie from Urban Golf Unit did especially well on Hole 8. This hole was on top of a parking structure and the target was Jelmar’s car which was on the street below. In accordance with one of the most commonly employed urbangolf rules, if you managed to get the ball inside a target (in this case the car) you would earn a -1.
Thomas Süß, King of the Winter Frenzy Night 2016- Lang lebe der König! - Crossgolf Aachen ©
When the last couple of flights had made it back (the 3 Swiss guys from Royal Urban Golf Club and the 3 Utrecht locals), the winner’s ceremony was ready to begin. Norman Dick and Thomas Süess from Crossgolf Aachen and Dino Aus Der Au from Royal Urban Golf Club had all hit 27 strokes! The organization made it easy and after the usual celebratory statement “The king is dead! Long live the king!” they announced Thomas as the winner of Winter Frenzy Night 2016 and he was adorned with a crown decorated with LED lights and a splash of shiny paper.
Jelmar, Poernaka and the rest of the organizing team put in over 60 hours of brain storming, planning and working to make the event as spectacular as possible – and it was! Those 60 hours are not including the time it took to design a ball especially for night play. The final prototypes had various colored LED lights inside them and each was assembled by hand. This involved making a hole in each ball large enough to fit a battery and LED light, then closing the hole with hot glue. It was actually really hard to do! It was a great idea, but there’s room for improvement and some more thinking and testing will go into next year’s ball construction. Speaking of next year’s event, you can definitely count me in! A big thank you to the UGU Crew for organizing yet another an unforgettable night. Now I know what ‘frenzy’ means in Dutch – it means that anything can happen!
Ball designed for the tournament
