Merry Forester 2022

Merry Forester is a one-day tournament that will be played on Saturday 17.12. in two rounds of 14 holes each.

This will be the fifth edition of the tournament. We organized Merry Forester for the first time as a series of two one-day tournaments played on December 23, 2017 and January 7th, 2018 with the participation of 18 (1st day) and 27 (2nd day) male and female players. The second series was played on December 8th and 22nd 2018 with the participation of 20 players in both tournaments. The third and last time when two Merry Forester tournaments connected in a series were played, was played on December 14th when world champion Paige Pierce also participated in the tournament and on December 28th 2019. After a year off due to Covid-19, Merry Forester was played for the fourth time as an single day event on December 18th 2021 with the participation of 43 players from Croatia, Slovenia and Austria.

The planned program of the tournament is as follows:

Saturday, December 17th
od 8:30 - meet up by the Arena Varaždin
9:00 - players meeting, 1st floor
9:30 - start of play in Round 1, 14 holes
11:30 - lunch (possibility to order food, extra charged)
12:45 - start of play in Round 2, 14 holes
- winners ceremony (scheduled for around 15:00)
- reception with sweet and salty snacks, mulled wine etc. to close the disc golf season, winners ceremony for Croatian Disc Golf League
- Secret Santa gifts exchange


In the evening, there is a possibility to continue socializing at the Varaždin Advent.

Registrations
The competition will be played in the categories MPO (open to male and female players), FPO (oonly female), Green (players of both genders PDGA rating up to 850) and Purple (players of both genders PDGA rating up to 800). Any player can play in the higher division (so even if you are rated 730, you can sign up to play in MPO), but you can not play in the division lover than your rating allows (player rated 801 can not play Purple).
The number of participants is limited to 56, so the competition will be played in a maximum of 14 groups of 4 players.

The registration fee for the MPO, FPO and Green categories is HRK 150 / €20, and the registration fee for the Purple category is HRK 100 / €14.
Players who are not PDGA members and do not have a rating can play the Purple category only if they have not played PDGA tournaments so far, or they have played PDGA tournaments and the last 6 rounds are not worth more than 800 rating points on average. If those rounds are worth more than 800 then they can play the Green or MPO / FPO category.

The registration fee includes the organization of the tournament, a reception after the Winners ceremony (sweet and salty snacks, mulled wine...), fee to the Croatian Flying Disc Association, a small souvenir for each player, prizes for the best players in each category and raffle prizes.

To register for the competition, open a separate registration page.
Competition results and live results will be published on the PDGA event page.

The play
The competition will be played in the following format:

Round 1 - groups will be formed with mixed categories and strength groups determined according to PDGA rating. We will try not to put players from the same clubs / countries in the same groups in the first round, so that through the game you can socialize with players you do not see regularly.

Round 2 - groups formed by result, without mixing categories.

Prizes and Tournament respect raffle
At the tournaments we organize, smaller prizes are awarded to the best three players in the MPO, FPO and Green categories who pay the full amount of the registration fee, and a prize to the winner of the Purple category (who pay a reduced registration fee), while we additionally reward all players (who deserve it :) ) through a raffle. The raffle is held at the end of the tournament, after the Winners ceremony in all categories. The usual top raffle prize is a disc golf backpack.

In order for a player to be able to claim a raffle prize, he / she must:
1. Be present at the players meeting
2. Pay the registration fee for the tournament in advance or during the tournament (no later than the beginning of the announcement of the winner)
3. Play all rounds of the tournament
4. Do mandatory check-in (if it is scheduled in the tournament program)
5. To be present at the announcement of the winner

If the player is drawn in the raffle, but has not met all four criteria, he cannot claim the prize, and the next player will be drawn.
The same player cannot win a raffle prize in two consecutive tournaments.
In the Merry Forester 2022 tournament, the prize cannot be won by players who won it in the Jingle Hills 2022 tournament:
Adrian Liber, Anđelko Zrinski, Danica Pajtak, Ivan Klanjčić and Stanislaus Amann.

Secret Santa
Upon registration, players will be invited to participate in the Secret Santa gift exchange. Everyone who decides to participate will be "in the hat" and 5 days before the tournament we will draw one person each who needs to buy a gift worth around 50 to 75 kn (7 to 10 €). More details about this will be sent to registered players via e-mail.

We introduced this gift exchange for the first time at Merry Forester 2021 and it was well received and a nice detail for the end of the disc golf season.

Course
Course is located by the sports hall Arena Varaždin (google maps location)
The couse map will be available soon. You can currently download the 2021 Merry Forester course map on this page, and the 2022 map will likely be the same or very similar.
The 14-hole layout will be set up in the forest next to Arena Varaždin and combines shorter, technical forest trails with more open and longer holes.
Disc Golf Park target baskets are used on all holes.
The tee pads on all holes will be set up with artificial grass carpet.

Photos and social networks
All the photos we take at the tournament will be added to the Google Photos Album at the end of each day and you can download them and use them for social networks.

When posting on Instagram, preferably use #merryforester and tag Lagoda Disc Golf @lagoda_disc_golf

Weather
You can follow the weather forecast for Varaždin on the Yr.no page. According to previous years, we hope for dry and cold weather, but with temperatures above zero and pleasant for playing.