04 Mar 2012 at 15:08 | Published by: Hans | Views: 9390 | News search

Parts of the two Sweidish U23 teams meeting each others in the final  (Photo by Arto Borg 2012)

Last year’s double win with an all Swedish final in the U23 Challenge in the though felt courses in Eskilstuna was maybe not so surprising, but this year’s follow up was maybe more surprising.

This year the U23 was played at the indoor eternit course in Rahola, Tampere, Finland. This is a course that is very familiar to the home players but seldom or never played before bye most of the guest teams. Alongside two home teams there were two teams from Sweden two from Germany, two from Austria and one Swiss team.

The nine teams were divided into two groups and quite soon there was dominance from the Nordic Teams. The Swedish teams played maybe as expected, the Finnish teams played over expectations and the continental European team played lower than expectations. This meant that the semifinals were to become an all Nordic battle between Finland and Sweden.

In the first semifinal Sweden 1 won over Finland 1 with quite a convincing margin (16-11) after significantly lower standard of the game from Finland 1 in exception from the closer Oskari Vihervaara that continued his brilliant performance.

In the second semifinal it was a much closer battle where Finland 2 and Sweden 2 took the game all the way to sudden death (15-15).

The final between the two Swedish Teams was also the best match of the week (85-92 in strokes and 12-7 in lanewins) where Sweden 1 was the best in the end. In the final Sweden ones Lina Liljegren showed her best performance by a 19 round (only blue round by a girl).

Finland 2 won the match for third price over Finland 1 by 12-10. Eeto Ikola of Finland was the only player scoring a perfect 18 round during the weekend.

Best individual players were:

Boys:

Oskari Vihervaara, Finland 20.17
Eirik Seljelid, Sweden 20.33
Nikolai Bhend, Switzerland 21.33
Juuso Tasku, Finland 21.50
Dino Medenhodzic, Sweden 21.83
Eeto Ikola, Finland 21.83

Girls:

Lina Liljegren, Sweden 22.00
Karin Heschl, Austria 22.83
Anne Bollrich, Germany 23.83

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