23 Oct 2016 at 01:25 | Published by: PatPenguin | Views: 16838 | News search

Jens Bergström, Overall Winner  (Photo by Jens Bergström)

The third and final part of Gothenburg mini tour on MOS took part in Grimmered, Gothenburg. The course is part of a big sports bar in Gothenburg and is also a course that belongs to Askims BGK.

Gothenburg for many years had a lot of good players in the Senior Male category. Actually all medalists in WAGM 2014 for this category belonged to three different clubs within Gothenburg. The mini tour reflects this in the result list and there are a tough competition between the different clubs to get the first place in many categories.

This competition we saw Erik Hirmas, who has appeared in the junior national team around 1990, play totally outstanding in his debut in the Senior Male category. He had an average of 32.25 and only Gunnar Bengtsson of Askim have had a lower average with 31.67. After two rounds Roger Niord was still leading the category two strokes ahead of Erik but when Erik had a 30 round in the third round he took the lead which he managed to keep all the way through to the end.

In the morning it was quite amazing to see the new generation of MOS players from Gullbergsbro. Lars Josefsson, Bengt Lund and others involved have made a great effort in teaching them the basics of many different disciplines within minigolf. It wasn't a shock when Alexander Niord won the Youth Male category with a dominating score. One of many female players to look out for in the future is Ester Eriksson who won the Youth Female category

In the Senior Female category there was only two players, Ulla Forsman from Askim and the great Linda Lundberg from Gullbergsbro. Last time Linda won but this time Ulla showed out to be the strongest of the two players. Ulla is very good at concrete and EC so even though it was a surprise that she won it was not that big surprise as we locally know that she can play very good.

But let's not forget the big prize on the line - the overall competition where the total result after three competitions with four rounds made in each was the deciding one for who would win the overall prize.

As we remember Jens Bergström had 288 strokes leading with 8 strokes ahead of Reine Niord. There was actually no other player who could reach for the first prize, so the two man race was exciting through this last leg. After one round Jens had still the same lead after 35 round from both players and seemed to go easily into his second victory and even after 12 lanes on the second lane Reine and Jens were still equal. On the coming six lanes a lot of things happened....
Reine had an ace on lane 13.
Jens had an ace on lane 14
Jens had a 3 on lane 15
On lane 17 Jens had another 3 after jumping over the creek and hitting the hole so hard that the ball went over the bumper stone.
Reine had an ace on lane 18.
Jens ball stopped in the tunnel and rolled back. Jens hit it again but too hard so it went over the hill. He did not make the putt from the hill so a 4 was the fact.
Thereby Reine came 5 strokes closer and was now only 3 strokes behind and the thriller was on.....

In the third round Reine took yet another stroke and the difference was now only two strokes heading into the final round. In the fourth round Reine was playing 2 triplets behind Jens. Jens started up on lane 2 with an ace just to see his putt on lane 3 pass the hole and achieving only a 3 there. Reine then had an ace on lane 7 now being just one single stroke behind.
Jens had a three on lane 11 which meant they now had an equal score.
Reine had an ace on lane 9 and thereby took the lead by 1 stroke.
Reine also had an ace on lane 12 which Jens compensated shortly after by having an ace on lane 16.
Jens had an ace on lane 18 and now it was totally equal once again.
Reine still had some of his favourite lanes left to play but had many twos.
On the last lane Reine needed to have an ace to win and two strokes for continue to play about the first prize. Reine's ball made it through the tunnel but just 10 centimetres more than that so now he had a putt for about 1.50 metre starting with a small uphill. The putt came and at first it seemed good but in the end it started to turn left and passed the hole with one cm.
Jens was the winner after a thriller we haven't seen since 2012 when Reine won with one stroke ahead of Jens.

We don't know what the tour will look like next year but hopefully there will be one. In many ways these tour competitions has been decisive for who will play for Sweden in the WAGM and in one way or another I think there will be some kind of minitour, regional or national, as Swedish players get more and more interested in this discipline.

Thank you to Jens Bergström who provided the information for this article.

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