Young domination as the Swedish Matchplay Champions was awarded
04 Jul 2014 at 15:35 | Published by: Hans | Views: 12141 | News search
Elisabeth Brandt and Sebastian Ekängen the new Swedish Champions (Photo by Per Olsson 2014)
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Also today’s match play finals were televised live on national public television. And today the weather was better and the broadcast was better tuned and produced as well.
As so many times before the by far best players over many rounds of stroke play is not necessarily the best when there is match play over only one lap. The margins for mistakes are much smaller and also the possibility for lower ranked players to be able to compete with the best is by as known much higher in the match play modus. And so when the semifinals were to be played no medalist from yesterday was left in the men’s class and only two in the ladies class.
Three of four players in the ladies class were juniors and the fourth is a senior lady. The match play silver medalist of last year’s Youth European Championships, Elisabeth Brant of BGK Linjen, had a disappointing stroke play competition and was left last in the five girl’s strong starting field. But today she showed that match play is her best game and by winning against yesterday’s champion Jenny Erlandsson already in the quarter finals. In the semifinal she was up against her team mate and fellow junior class player Carolina Larsson. This was though an easy journey for Elisabeth that won with 8-1 and followed through to the final.
In the final she meet yesterday’s silver medalist Annelie Larsson from the same club. It became a tight and quite well played final with Elisabeth in the lead already from lane 1. In the end Annelie had to win the last three lanes to keep the match alive. Lane 16 she managed to win by an ace but on lane 17 she had some unlucky touch for the ball in the whole keeping the ace away and Elisabeth could cheer as the Swedish Champion. So two times silver for Annelie Larsson and also this year a junior wins the Swedish Match play Championships. Seems like the next generations ladies is Sweden stands strong and soon will compete for the places in the national team general class.
It was also a historical triple for the BGK Linjen club, from Landskrona in south Sweden, which took all three medals after Carolina secured the bronze in the bronze match. BGK Linjen will also represent Sweden in the Europacup in Schriesheim in October.
On the men’s side the two yesterday’s bronze medalist Fredrik Tagesson was eliminated by Marcus Karlsson already in the first round. The two felt giants of yesterday Carl-Johan Ryner and Filiph Svensson was beaten in the quarter finals. Filiph was eliminated by Peter Eisenschmidt that later went on to take the bronze medal by beating Torgny Kjellström, who was the player eliminating Carl-Johan.
But the main players of the day were two young men’s. Sebastian Ekängen has played for the Swedish junior national team for many years now and now did his first championship in the senior’s class. But his rival in the final was far younger still. Elias Zachariassen of Perstorp, has for the past years been one of Sweden’s most talented youth players, but as still only thirteen years old being able to reach the final in the Swedish Championships is no less than a sensation.
And in the final Elias continued to play really well and after 16 lanes he had 6 aces and 10 twos. But his opponent in the final Sebastian played even better with 10 aces after 16 lanes. So starting on lane 17 Sebastian had two lanes up and a draw on this lane would make him champion. And by making his eleventh ace of the round Sebastian could secure the title. Elias had to settle for silver but no doubt his time will come.
Also today Janne Strandberg did an excellent job as expert commentator and also the main commentator Roger Blomqvist was better today and he ended the session by stating that he hoped that Minigolf would be included in this Week of Swedish Championships and televised also in the future. And all players in the final did an excellent job in marketing the sport with exciting games and excellent play.
» Results Matchplay » To the SVT Final Broadcast » To the Swedish website for the Championships
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