11 Jul 2009 at 19:28 | Published by: JJM | Views: 6915 | News search

Christian Freilach celebrating a hole-in-one.  (Photo by www.opc-pro.de 2006)

Forever young Christian Freilach made an exception to his habits, and participated in Austrian Senior Championships 2009 at the eternite course of Leobersdorf. Freilach had no serious rivals in strokeplay competition, as he took gold with average score 20.50 after 8 rounds.

No less than 3 players tied the second best score in senior men, average 21.25 (6 points behind Freilach). Franz Reich pulled the longest straw in the sudden death play-off, and took silver. Peter Draxler was second best in the play-off and picked the bronze medal, leaving Reinhard Schuster to 4th place.

Elfriede Andrasch won gold in senior women’s strokeplay competition, with average 22.63. Doris Ertl was second with average 22.88, and Maria Fuschlberger third with average 23.63.

Medalists in veterans’ strokeplay were 1. Karl Lakos (21.38), 2. Josef Holzhaider (21.88) and 3. Peter Schalek (22.50). Medalists in female veterans’ strokeplay were 1. Martha Sturm (23.13), 2. Christine Nestler (23.50) and 3. Renate Widek (23.63).

After the strokeplay competition was a separate matchplay championship tournament, where the 32 best men and 16 best women of strokeplay championships (regardless of senior or veteran age) were arranged into a knock-out cup diagram.

(In many countries the results of matchplay finals are regarded as the only final result of the competition, and the first 8 rounds of strokeplay are simply "preliminary rounds", without any championship status. Austrian Minigolf Federation has in recent years seeked to reconcile the relations between supporters of strokeplay format and supporters of matchplay format, by giving a separate championship status to both of these competition formats.)

Christian Freilach marched all the way to the final round in the matchplay competition, but was left second as Herbert Bäk won the final match for gold medal. Robert Halda won the match for bronze medal against Peter Draxler.

Maria Fuschlberger won the final match in women’s matchplay competition, against Hermine Wild. Elisabeth Schöller won the bronze match against Elfriede Andrasch.

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