08 Mar 2010 at 12:43 | Published by:  | Views: 8965 | News search

Podium of the Under 23 Challenge in Vedano: 1st place for Austria, 2nd place for Italy, 3rd place for Germany  (Photo by Paolo Porta)

Under-23 national challenge edition took part on the indoor concrete course in Vedano al Lambro (near Monza, ITALY).
This year, 5 countries took part in this event: Austria (2 teams), Germany (1 team + 1 mixed with Italy), Sweden (2 teams), Switzerland (2 teams) and the host country Italy (2 teams + 1 mixed with Germany). 10 teams in total.

The 10 teams have been divided in two groups, with the following composition :

GROUP A: ITALY 1, AUSTRIA 1, GERMANY 1, SWEDEN 1, SWITZERLAND 2
GROUP B: ITALY 2, AUSTRIA 2, SWEDEN 2, SWITZERLAND 1, MIXED GER/ITA

On Saturday 6th March, 5 qualification rounds have been played. Each team has to play against each other teams of its group. The "modus" was a team match play. At the end of the round the team with the bigger number of won lanes got 2 points. 1-1 if the number of won lanes would have been equal.

This is the situation at the end of qualification rounds :

GROUP A:
1 GERMANY 1 8
2 ITALY 1 4
3 AUSTRIA 1 4
4 SWEDEN 1 2
5 SWITZERLAND 2 2

GROUP B:
1 ITALY 2 8
2 AUSTRIA 2 5
3 SWITZERLAND 1 4
4 SWEDEN 2 2
5 GERMANY/ITALY 1

So the 4 teams qualified for semi-finals were the following:
GERMANY 1, ITALY 1, ITALY 2, AUSTRIA 2

Good results for home teams that both reached the qualification and have to play in the same semi-final match. One Italian team sure in final, that was the main target for home players.
The other semi-final is played Germany 1 vs. Austria 2.

Germany 1 was - and will also be at the end of the tournament - the best team by far, considering technical level and strokes played.

Disappointment for Sweden, none of its team could reach the semi-finals and have to play only for 5th place finals.
Also disappointment for Switzerland 1, that made the best stroke results on Group B but could only manage to get a 3rd place in its group.

Semi-final were quite exciting: Austria 2 take the chance of the only not-so-good round by German team and defeated them 17-10, reaching the final. The "home-match" was won by Italy 2 to Italy 1 with same score, 17-10.

Germany 1 recovered a bit of motivation in the 3rd-4th place final and won over Italy 1 with a very good round.

But the biggest emotions came from the final. Italy 2 was in the lead when more than 3-quarters of lane had been played. At a certain point, the advantage for home players was 4 holes, and when the youth European and World Champion Karin Heschl made a "6" at lane 13, the victory seemed sure for Italy.
But there something changed. Karin reacted really well making ace at lane 14-15-17-18 and took advantage of the inexperienced Italian Claudia Baio, who played rather well but this was her first main international tournament, so she suffered a little bit in the decisive moments, missing lanes 15-16-18.
In the last match, Luca Dellasega was winning 4-1 to Thomas Obertaxer, but then he lost lane 13 and so Austria got the decisive advantage point.

So the victory went to Austria 2 team, formed by Marc Cervinka, Katja Schalkhaas, Karin Heschl, Thomas Obertaxer. They got only the 5th "stroke" result overall, but they were better than all the other in match-play modus.

The final ranking is the following :

1. AUSTRIA 2
2. ITALY 2
3. GERMANY 1
4. ITALY 1
5. SWEDEN 1
6. SWEDEN 2
7. SWITZERLAND 1
8. AUSTRIA 1
9. GERMANY/ITALY
10. SWITZERLAND 2

The best individual players of the tournament were, among men, Boris Arzuffi and Roland Mittelberger (both from Italy) with total score of 154 strokes (25.7 average); among ladies, with same score than best men players, Yvonne Klukas (Switzerland) with total score of 154 strokes as well.

Best round of the tournament was 22 played by:
Marc Cervinka (Austria) and Roger Wicki (Switzerland)
A total of 21 "blue" rounds have been played.

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