09 Aug 2014 at 23:52 | Published by: Hans | Views: 19530 | News search

Annika Dellmann and Igor Pantelimonov won the match play titles in Lahti  (Photo by Lahti organising team 2014)

Today was a historical day for the young minigolf nation of Russia. And we also saw the end of the best junior career ever as Annika Dellmann crowned it with a gold in match play.

Igor Pantelimonov took Russias first World Championship title when he won the match play final in the youth boy category. It was also the first medal at all taken by Russia by a man.

Igor started his day today by winning over well fighting Adam Kelly of Great Britain. After that he won another tight match against Slovakian Radovan Struhar. In the quarter final he won by 4-1 over yesterday’s stroke play champions, Sebastian Piekorz of Germany. In the semifinal he was forced to a sudden death against Swedens Markus Nilsson.

In the final Igor was facing another German, Jan-Peter Lichtenberg, who on his way to the final had beaten two other Russians. But Igor must have thought two is enough and won the final by an impressive 6-3 margin to become historical for his nation. Since Igor was also sixth individually in the stroke play final he is the second best overall male individual player in the Lahti championships with place 6-1. Only Sebastian Piekorz has better individual score with place 1-5.

The bronze match was won by Germanys Manuel Szablikowski over Swedens Markus Nilsson. In the girls category yesterday’s winner Jasmin Hansson had to leave already in the first match against Germanys Laura Heckel. Laura later followed through to win the bronze.

Yesterday’s silver medalist Annika Dellman had a much better day than Jasmin and by the match quota 25-8 in four matches she was took the gold in an impressive manner. Annika now won her second individual title after having won stroke play last year. In her last years as junior she can look back on what is most likely the most successful junior career of all time. She has three gold and one silver in team and on her individual starts she has the following extremely impressive rankings scores

(year, stroke play, match play)
2011 2, 4
2012 2, 3
2013 1, 5
2014 2, 1

And on top of that she won two individual bronze in general class in Bad Münder last year plus a team title.

In the final Annika won against Sweden’s Elisabeth Brandt, which improved her last years bronze in match play to become silver this year? And finally as already stated Germanys Laura Heckel won the bronze against Switzerland’s Natasha Huber.

For one great minigolf nation, Austria, today’s match play was a veritable disaster. Only one match won (on 8 attempts) and that game was actually between two Austrian boys.

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