08 Apr 2012 at 17:09 | Published by: Hans | Views: 11364 | News search

Filiph Svensson and Anders Gudmundstuen, team mates in Skoghall, but rivals in NM  (Photo by Pasi Aho 2012)

The Nordic Championships are played every second year. This time the arrangement was held for the first time outside the Nordic Countries in Liepaja, Latvia. The quite new indoor eternit course was during training predicted to be fairly easy. The Swedish Head Coach Jan Strandberg predicted a men winner’s team result with an average of 20.5.

The competition was played over 8 rounds where all players played the first six rounds and then the team completion was ended. This was followed by another two rounds for the individual finals, but with slightly less players in each category. All categories that are played in International Championships is included (Men, Ladies, Junior Boys, Junior Girls, Senior Men and Senior Ladies).

Four team categories were played (Men, Ladies, juniors and oldtimers). The prediction was that Sweden was the favorites for the gold in all categories. But pretty soon it became clear that in two of the categories the boys from Finland wanted another result. In the men category Sweden was in the lead more or less all the competition but the Men’s team of Finland didn’t make the journey easy for the Swedes. With only half a round to go the margin was down to 8 strokes but in the end Sweden won with 12. As Jan Strandberg predicted it was needed a low average (20.23) for the winners in the men’s team.

In the juniors category Finland was actually in the driver’s seat for most of the tournament. With one lap to go their brilliant play was not giving the Swedish juniors much of a chance, but with their highest round of 68 the Swedish team tried their best to put pressure on the Finns. But in the end the juniors from Finland secured the win with 4 strokes.

The best team of the competition was found in the Oldtimers class. The team from Sweden had an astonishing average of 20.17 and was not giving their opponents much of a chance. In the Ladies Team the Swedish ladies were even more dominating winning by 3.4 strokes in average.

Team results:

Men’s Team:
1. Sweden, 607, 20.23
2. Finland, 619, 20.63
3. Norway, 644, 21,47

Ladies Team:
1. Sweden, 383, 21,28
2. Latvia, 445, 24,72
3. Finland, 459, 25.50

Juniors Team:
1. Finland, 394, 21,89
2. Sweden, 398, 22,11
3. Denmark, 425, 23,61

Oldtimers Team:
1. Sweden, 363, 20.17
2. Norway, 398, 22.11
3. Finland, 413, 22.94

The individual finals were showing some brilliant performances and some very thrilling endings in some of the classes.

But let’s start with the not so close classes. In the junior girls Lina Liljegren of Sweden was quite outstanding and won with a 6 stroke margin over team mate Sara Karlsson. Lina and Sara was both better than the winner in the ladies class Jenny Erlandsson that won by a margin of 2 strokes over team mate Frida Elmdahl. Denmarks Rikke Sörensen, surprise leader after Saturday had to settle for bronze.

In the Ladies Oldtimers we had the biggest victory margin when Sweden’s Linda Lundberg won by 13 strokes over Norway’s Nora Fause. Linda was also the best lady overall in the Nordics with average score of 20.38.

In the oldtimers men had the best player of the tournament, Sweden’s Jan-Åke Persson with the only blue average of 19.88. Second another 5 strokes behind came Peter Nordin and Morgan Munther secured the all Swedish podium by beating Norway’s Kjell Nyhus by one stroke.

In the junior boys class the ending became a thriller. Finland’s Eetu Ikula was leading all the way in the tournament, but a strong finish by Sweden’s Robin Heidengård with 19-18 the two last laps forced Eeto to make two or less on the last lane (the flash). First stroke was a miss but second was an ace and Eetu won by one stroke. Third was another Finn, Juuso Tasku.

In the men’s competition Filiph Svensson, reigning world champion from Sweden, was in the lead all the way until the sixth round where he has passed by his team mate Peter Eisenschmidt. Filiph then made a strong finish by 19-20 and Peter could only get 21-21. In between them Norway’s Anders Gudmundstuen finished 20-19 and secured the silver. The best finish of all was made by Finland’s Riku Pennanen with the brilliant Sunday score of 19-19-19-19. This was almost leading to medal and he came fourth only one stroke behind Peter. Finland’s Kosti Salonen also had a great finish and he was best the five last laps by average of 19.2 including two 18 rounds in a row.

Individual Results:

Junior Girls:
1. Lina Liljegren, Sweden, 166
2. Sara Karlsson, Sweden, 172
3. Marielle Svensson, Sweden, 188

Junior Boys:
1. Eetu Ikula, Finland, 168
2. Robin Heidengård, Sweden, 169
3. Juuso Tasku, Finland, 174

Ladies Oldtimers:
1. Linda Lundberg, Sweden, 163
2. Nora Fause, Norway, 175
3. Seija Björk, Finland, 207

Mens Oldtimers:
1. Jan-Åke Persson, Sweden, 159
2. Peter Nordin, Sweden, 164
3. Morgan Munther, Sweden, 173

Ladies:
1. Jenny Erlandsson, Sweden, 181
2. Frida Elmdahl, Sweden, 183
3. Rikke Sörensen, Denmark, 185

Men:
1. Filiph Svensson, Sweden, 160
2. Anders Gudmundstuen, Norway, 161
3. Peter Eisenschmidt, Sweden, 162
4. Riku Pennanen, Finland, 163
5. Kosti Salonen, Finland, 163

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