17 Jul 2011 at 21:01 | Published by: Hans | Views: 12167 | News search

New Swedish champion Filiph Svensson.  (Photo by Anders Nilsson 2011)

The Swedish Championship in Växjö is over. This year many of the best players were not present of one reason or the other. So in the men’s category it was already from the beginning clear that there would be a new Swedish Champions this year. In the ladies class Sandra Bengtsson was favorite for defending her title from last year.

The competition was played on two quite hard courses, where especially the felt course was quite challenging, but also the eternit course proved to be a challenging task. The weather was apart from Thursday that showered away quite nice with lots of sun.

In the Old boys category we had a favorite that held. Jan-Ake Persson, Sjöviken, went to the pole position already on the second lap and then he didn’t let anyone come to close to him for the rest of the 10 rounds.

In the Oldgirls class Bernice Thors, Gullbergsbro, was one of the favorites and when she could improve her first eternit lap from 32 to 19 in the second she could manage to win yet another national championships.

In the boy’s junior the toughest battle for gold appeared. This whole class was difficult to bet along the way with many leaders on the way forward. On the last lanes of the last lap the battle for gold was between the two youngsters Sebastian Ekängen of Skoghall and rising star Derice Shumilov Susoho, Fröslunda BGK. With only six tracks left on the final lap was the guys totally equal. Then failed Ekängen with a three and a four and Derice was in front by 3 strokes by two two’s. But then Derice ended with 3-2-2-2 while Sebastian ended with really sharp 2-1-1-1 to secure the gold by one stroke. Undeniably this was a sophisticated end to the most raffling class this year. Third place was Filip Johansson, Sjöviken IF, maybe the big favorite before the tournament.

Sara Karlsson, Olofström, won an overwhelming victory in the class that in advance was maybe the most difficult to bet on. And how she did it! With an enormous margin of 37 strokes she won over the runner up Lina Liljegren of Sjöviken, who took the silver by a better finish than home player Frida Elmdahl, Vaxjo.

Sara Karlsson’s results are not only superior in the junior girls class. She is also clearly better than the winner of the Oldtimers lady, women’s class, men’s junior class and she had also been second in the Mens Oldtimers class. In fact all the three junior ladies were better than the winner in the ladies class. This has never happened before in Swedish Minigolf and is a combination of a weak ladies class and a strong girl junior’s class. It’s not easy for Swedish Head coach Jan Strandberg to neglect the result of these junior girls for the team lineup for Stockholm.

Filiph Svensson, Skoghall, was outstanding in the men’s class and really only had one bad lap of 12. Otherwise, the newly appointed WMF world ranking leader was playing in a class of its own. Especially on felt where he was 2,7 strokes per round better than anyone else. Winning the Swedish Championship by 22 strokes in 12 laps is a margin unseen before in the men’s class. The record before was made by Hans Olofsson on felt in 2002 with 21 strokes.

Second was Daniel Källström, Sjöviken, and third came home player Björn Berntsson after finishing in style and beating Rasmus Schedin, Sundbyberg, on the last lap with eight strokes to secure the bronze by 3.

The biggest surprise and the by far most welcome by the crowd were in the ladies class. Tuula Mörck, Myresjö, won a surprise this year’s Championship in women’s class. The deciding factor was the stable game that Tuula showed on the final day. This class was a very strange class where all five players where quite close to the medals all the time and positions could shift from lead to last from one lap to another.

But in the end Tuula was not really threatened and won by a big margin of 16 strokes before Tantogården Rose-Marie Lönnqvist. RoseMarie won a playoff for silver over the big favorite Sandra Bengtsson of Uppsala, leaving Sandra with bronze.

» Full results
» Photo Gallery
» Video Gallery with Interviews (In Swedish)
» In the media (Swedish)

SHARE Share Tweet