Today we finalized our bingo of gold medals in Elitserien. A bingo, of course, is five in a row and with this we have nine titles since we were promoted for the 1996 season. It's quite amazing when I look back at that first year and then compare how much we have improved. Enough of the memories, back to this play this weekend. I didn't decide to play until one week before the competition since I really want to spend as much time as possible at home with my wife and daughter. As luck would have it this weekend was played in Jönköping only 50 km from where my wife's parents live, and with this we decided that I would play, but not stay with the team in a hotel. I practiced two hours for myself on Wednesday and skipped the team's practice one day later, which were a good choice since the practice on Thursday almost rained out. When Friday came I actually had had more practice than my team mates, not exactly what I had envisioned.
At the practice on Friday I felt some pressure to show that I still can play, for two reasons. First I haven't played many competitions this year, although I have practiced, and I really want to be someone they can depend on when the going gets tough. The other reason was that I'd been selected to go to Odense, without having played the Swedish Championships, but I did play two of three OBS-competitions. But I know Janne thought long and hard before deciding. Anyway, the practice went good with me having an average slightly over 21.
In the competition I felt that we were almost unstoppable if we kept our heads in the game. That were to be totally accurate as we did keep our concentration good for the first six games, but the final game against Jönköping was a mess, at least for my part. Playing two extremely bad shots due to not focusing on what to do is unacceptable, even if we already had secured the gold. I take pride in trying my hardest at every team competition regardless of the situation, and today I didn’t on two occasions. But to end up with an average of 20.0 in Jönköping is a really nice answer to any questions Janne, and me, could have had regarding my form going into August.
Talking about Odense, this will be the first time I encounter the more or less hated cup-form. I have always despised it in any major championships, but when analyzing the WC I have shifted towards the positive side. Why? Simply because I see the WC as a team competition with an extra individual competition afterwards. With the cup we won’t carry any results from the team competition effectively making the WC into one team competition and one individual competition. One really bad thing about the cup is the selection of the lanes as we only will play 9 from each system. The 9 lanes with the highest average (for the 6 top nations) on eternite and the 9 lanes with lowest average on felt. This might seem to be a good way, but if you look into it a bit deeper it may not be. The highest on eternite could quite possibly include one or two lanes that are more or less uncontrollable and that is not, I hope, what those in charge want. The lowest on felt will most certainly include most of these small slide (1), corner (2), side gates (9), cradle (10), gentleman (14), trap door (16), slide (17), Örkelljunga (18). As you might note there is eight lanes, but not one with a traditional straight felt shot!! Is the idea really to have as many lanes without a green as possible? That is definitely not a good representation of a felt course. The solution would be that all head coaches sat down after two days of play and supplied with a list of hole average, from the top 6 nations, voted on which 9+9 lanes is to be used in the cup. Now I guess that I will get comments, not here probably, that I want 9 difficult felt lanes with green so that the Swedes will win 7-8 felt lanes each cup match. That is not my intention; I would prefer 4 straight lanes with green (boxes, lightning, bridge, fishbone) and 5 technical lanes (gentleman, örkelljunga, corner, 1 slide, inclined gate/trap door). My voice probably won’t be heard to this year’s competition, but maybe in the future. We should always play on the 9+9 lanes that best represent the system and are almost without the element of luck and are not too easy (like a volcano).
That’ll have to do for this time. Now I will sit back and enjoy a nice evening watching the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.
See you in Odense!