Windmills and clowns. Dinosaurs and plaster dwarves. Ice creams. Beach towns. Kids having meltdowns when they miss a shot. We have a shared collective memory of what minigolf means and it’s not course notes and coaches, world championships and anti-doping policies.

The Secret Garden, Onehunga - an urban minigolf oasis. JASON DORDAY/STUFF The Secret Garden, Onehunga - an urban minigolf oasis. JASON DORDAY/STUFF

And yet competitive minigolf isn’t new and it isn’t that obscure. It’s big in Europe and it’s had a world championship for 27 years. We were just late to the party when Hicks found himself in a small lakeside city in southern Finland in 2015, learning that everything he thought he knew about minigolf was completely wrong.

The sport director for the World Minigolf Sport Federation, Pasi Aho, estimates there are 20,000 competitive players worldwide. In the 1960s and '70s, the sport was mainly concentrated in Germany, Sweden, Austria and Switzerland, but by the late '80s it had spread across most of mainland Europe. Aho himself - who would reach a world ranking in the 30s - took it up as a teenager in Finland, playing on a course next to his local ice rink. The federation is earnestly pursuing International Olympic Committee recognition as a real sport, but it’s still run by volunteers and the world’s best players are still playing for mere 500 Euro ($880) payouts. And, as Aho says, “there are so many new things youngsters can do, it is hard to get them to play minigolf competitively”.

But in New Zealand? Never been a thing. Until about three years ago.

For Hicks, watching the Keoghan documentary somehow begat the idea of running the length of the Netherlands - 10 marathons in 10 days - dressed in a morph suit. And this somehow begat the idea of forming a New Zealand minigolf team.

He discovered that the rights to form a New Zealand minigolf federation sat, dormant, with New Zealand Golf. He got as far as getting their blessing to form an organisation and exchanging paperwork with federation boss Dr Gerhard Zimmerman.

Then four years passed and Hicks found himself chatting to a couple of Kiwis - Chris Service and Henry Stock - in an Amsterdam bar. His opening gambit was to suggest they form a New Zealand minigolf team and go to the world championships. “The second thing I said was ‘do you want to be my friends? We’re all Kiwis living in Amsterdam’. I kinda did things the other way around.”

Hicks got some blazers made. He came up with a logo that he’s rather proud of - a pecking kiwi, its proboscis morphing into a putter. And he entered a full team (six men, three women) in the 2015 World Minigolf Championship in Lahtti, Finland.

Ollie Hicks is proud of his design for the federation logo - a kiwi whose proboscis turns into a putter. JASON DORDAY/STUFF Ollie Hicks is proud of his design for the federation logo - a kiwi whose proboscis turns into a putter. JASON DORDAY/STUFF

The New Zealanders were welcomed with enthusiasm. “How shall I describe it?” says Aho, who was tournament director. “It was a great thing for everyone who was there to see a New Zealand team coming.”

For the Kiwis, it was a piss-up, wasn’t it? “Correct,” says Hicks. Yes, agrees Aho carefully. “It was for them seriously a big shock. They probably knew it was going to be different, but I don’t know what exactly they would have expected.”

Hicks bore the New Zealand flag in a parade through the city before it all began. His team brought half a dozen spectators, which was unusual, who drank and cheered, which was also unusual, set against competitive minigolf’s funereal silence. “We were basically the Cool Runnings of the event,” he says.

“Everyone loved us,” says Lucy Giesen, who also signed on to the team when she ran into Hicks in a bar. “No matter what, we had a smile on our face.”

The New Zealanders turned up two days before the start, bringing regular golf putters, and no golf balls - assuming they’d just be given a ball at the start.

First lesson: most serious minigolfers have their own carrybag full of balls of different sizes, weights and composition, often using a different one on each hole. Second: because some of those balls more closely resemble heavyweight squash balls than traditional golf balls, they use specialist rubber-faced putters. Third: they turn up a week early to thoroughly learn the course, practising eight hours a day and writing up course notes that plan their tee-off positions and what line they aim to hit the ball on.

NZ minigolf international Bobby Hart's asymmetric shoes. JASON DORDAY/STUFF NZ minigolf international Bobby Hart's asymmetric shoes. JASON DORDAY/STUFF

Also, while we’re on the technical stuff, there are four types of minigolf surfaces. Three of them are played on in Europe - they look like tiny putting greens and don’t have obstacles and decorations. We have the fourth variety, which uses artificial turf and as many windmills as you like. Imagine only ever playing hardcourt tennis, then turning up at Wimbledon and realising it was played on grass.

The New Zealanders were loaned some clubs. Danish player Vincent Huus volunteered to coach them, and got his national teammates to donate a bag of balls. “It was a roaring success: we made the top 10,” says Hicks.

We should note here that there were 10 competing nations. New Zealand was last in the men’s and women’s team event; they occupied the bottom three places in the individual women’s event; and all their men were likewise placed in the last 10 ranking spots.

Hicks considers the event a personal triumph. He hit a dozen or so holes-in-one and came home with a trophy. He’s got it with him now: a small plastic cup, one arm broken (he dropped it in the car park on the way in to be interviewed). It’s the 2015 New Zealand Minigolf Champion Trophy. That’s odd, because there was no competitive minigolf in New Zealand back then (and how much the worse a place we were for that).

Ah. Turns out, with nine Kiwis in Finland, they decided to aggregate their daily scores and the best-performed over the four days would be crowned the first New Zealand champion. After the third day, Hicks was running second to Andrew McCarthy. Only McCarthy hadn’t realised the tournament was a four-day event, and he had to fly home to Switzerland for work. Hicks grins: “I played to the final whistle.”

The biggest lesson for the Kiwis, observing their rival teams with their official coaches, notebooks full of plans of how to play each hole and those bulging bags of balls was that minigolf was considered worthy of serious study in Europe. Says Giesen: “We said ‘why can’t we do this in New Zealand?’ ”