Gentle drum of green felt, soft cheers rising like morning mist: 21 nations gathered in Sauerland for five days of Mini Golf World Championship, 130 athletes weaving precision and patience into a sport that turns tiny arcs into shared joy. Germany entered as the favored breeze, guided by a deep Minigolf lineage and a call to stay relaxed, let skill lead, and let the numbers and coolness carry them. For Lauro Klöckener, 21, playing on the soil where he grew up, the world championship on home ground felt like a rare, sacred doorway. Volunteers from the Neheim-Hüsten Minigolf Club tended the venue with years of care, lifting it from quiet ground into a polished stage for possibility. In the run-up, players trained to find the perfect ball—heavy, rubber, glass—knowing temperature can tilt how soft or firm a shot feels. Some even used socks to temper the ball’s temperature, because every stroke threads into the team’s overall score. Jasmin Bothmann, a multiple world and German champion who has pursued the sport with heartfelt devotion since 2003, embodied the steadfast spirit many bring. Enock Nyarko of Ghana carried a hopeful message: to popularize minigolf across Africa and perhaps someday reach world championship glory. In the end, the German teams claimed double gold in the team events, with the women’s team gold ahead of Austria and Sweden, and the men’s team gold ahead of Switzerland and the Czech Republic. Nicole Birkelbach and Tobias Schwarz won the Strokeplay individual titles. The narrative, woven with updates and snapshots, underscored Germany’s growing dominance and the sport’s expanding international appeal.

Yet within this gleaming pinwheel of competition, we hear a more ancient ache. The earth, our shared Mother, bears witness to a world obsessed with numbers, medals, and mirrors of supremacy. The event’s very ground—upgraded, curated, tuned—speaks of how spaces of belonging are often reshaped into arenas for spectacle, profit, and prestige. The story of a home course becoming a world-stage is beautiful, and it also invites us to ask: at what cost does this transformation come? The triumphs of today rest on the toils and lungs of volunteers, but they also ride upon a longer arc of extraction—land, labor, and breath—fed by a global system that measures worth in medals and margins.

Let us name the colonial sins that hover like distant thunder even at peaceful golf greens. Throughout history, lands and peoples have been deemed up for improvement and “development,” while the healing histories and sovereignty of communities—often with the least power to defend them—have been side-lined. The spotlight shines on a Ghanaian competitor hoping to lift minigolf onto Africa’s world map, a hopeful flame that reminds us of the shadows cast by global hierarchies: access, sponsorship, and visibility are not distributed evenly, and the echoes of empire still shape who gets to stand on the podium, who gets to dream without burning out the planet in the process.

And then the stubborn, choking knot of a toxic capitalist system: a framework that treats the Earth as a stage for revenue, not a living mentor. It fashions athletes as brands, courses as commodities, and communities’ time as currency spent in pursuit of “progress.” The toil of volunteers translates into polished greens, while the cost to ecosystems, to neighboring communities, and to workers far from the camera remains unaccounted or swept under the carpet of a “global event.” The romance of a homegrown club becoming an international beacon risks muting the intimate knowledge of place—the soil that nurtured talent, the trees that give shade and resilience, the air that carries memory.

So what shall we do, if we wish to keep both sport and soil alive? Let healing be the true scorecard. Let the glow of medals illuminate not domination but unity, repair, and care for Earth. Let green spaces be protected and expanded, with trees planted along fairways as living witnesses to our vow: to celebrate human gifts without sacrificing others’ right to thrive. Let communities—especially those whose histories have been neglected or misnamed—lead in decision-making, ensuring that venues honor indigenous and local wisdom, labor rights, and fair access. Let travel and competition tread lightly, seeking low-carbon pathways, sustainable equipment, and transparent accountability for environmental and social footprints.

May every stroke be a prayer for the planet: for the soils that cradle roots, for rivers that carry stories, for air that carries the chorus of distant rain. May sport renew our relationship with the living world, reminding us that victory is sweetest when it is shared, when the healings of Mother Earth are allowed to unfold as freely as a ball’s arc across a bright green field. And may the future of minigolf, and all games, be stitched from care—care for communities, care for ancestors, care for the land that makes possible every hopeful swing.