24 Jan 2014 at 09:35 | Published by: paoloITA | Views: 13425 | News search

Podium of the 18th edition Nissan Trophy  (Photo by Luca Colnago )

The 18th edition of "Trofeo Nissan" 10 rounds pair marathon has been played in Vedano al Lambro (Italy) last weekend.

This tournament is going more and more international every year. It has now become a real winter point of meeting for minigolfplayers all around Europe.
This time 12 countries have been represented: Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Czech Republic, Holland, Belgium, France, Portugal, Denmark, Hungary. Many Italian players could not take part in the tournament due to high request of registrations from abroad.

Alberto Pirovano, the head manager of this event, did the usual great job to organize the tournament and help all foreign player to spend their days in Italy in the best way.
The tournament, as ever, has been extremely exciting and with very high technical level.
40 blue rounds and the usual close match between the top pairs made this tournament really special.

At the first stages the strongest team seemed to be Massimiliano Crespi - Massimiliano Ciceri, which started very strong with a 24-22 by Crespi. They maintained the lead until the 7th rounds but in the last 3 rounds they had an unexpected 87 that caused them loosing not only the victory but also the podium. They ended in 4th place.
So after 8th round the leadership was taken by Marco Templin - Lorenzo Levis (a very high ranked international pair) with a margin of 2 strokes on the German team Sascha Mark - Christopher Jack and 3 on the Italian team Paolo Porta - Boris Arzuffi, the winners of last edition that try to make a very difficult double.
The 9th round was not so good for Sascha (30) but very good for Paolo (23) that gained 2 strokes on Marco (25). So before the last round we have two teams playing for the title, with only one stroke difference.

Lorenzo played the last round, scoring a 26, the same than Paolo, so the victory went to Marco Templin - Lorenzo Levis with just one stroke on Paolo POrta - Boris Arzuffi. Marco Templin is the first non Italian player to win this tournament.
The podium has been completed by Sascha Mark - Christopher Jack, that ended 5 strokes behind the winners. The time for a foreing team victory is coming close...
The other foreign team in the top ten is Frederick Miessner - Martin Stoeckle, and a very good result has to be noticed to the Hungarian Team Nimrod Gombkoto - Chris Koleszar which ended in 14th place at their first experience in Vedano.

The score of the winning team, 252, does not represent the record of the tournament (249, setted last year by Porta-Arzuffi) but it is a very good score anyway. The top 10 teams all played under 27 average, which is a little bit worse than last year, probably due to high temperature and humidity inside the hall during the night.

Indvidually, the best player of the tournament has been Paolo Porta with 149 strokes in 6 rounds (24,8 average, exactly the same he had previous year), the only player under 25 average of the tournament. Best foreign player is Marco Templin with 127 in 5 rounds (25,4 average)

. The best 10 individual players of the tournament has been the following:

1 Paolo Porta ITA 27 24 24 25 23 26 24,8 149
2 Lorenzo Levis ITA 25 26 23 25 26 25 125
3 Pierluigi Marchiani ITA 22 27 25 27 25 25,2 126
4 Marco Templin GER 24 23 30 25 25 25,4 127
5 Massimiliano Crespi ITA 24 22 26 24 29 28 25,5 153
6 Sascha Mark GER 26 23 25 30 24 25,6 128
7 Emanuele Prestinari ITA 25 30 22 26 27 24 25,7 154 8 Philippe Lheritier FRA 24 26 26 26 27 25,8 129
9 Christopher Jack GER 24 27 26 27 25 25,8 129
10 Anna Bandera ITA 26 24 28 25 26 25,8 129

Best round of the tournament has been a 22, played 5 times by: Pierluigi Marchiani, Massimiliano Crespi, Emanuele Prestinari, Gioachino Ricchiuto and Vincent Huus. To be remarked the round by Vincent Huus, because he scored a 22 with a 4 on lane 2 ! And then only a 2 on lane 6...really unbelievable!!

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