30 Aug 2012 at 23:30 | Published by: Hans | Views: 12343 | News search

The German ladies team awaiting the golden shot by Bianca Zodrow  (Photo by Hans Bergström 2012)

Day two of the European Championships in Porto saw a much windier weather than yesterday. This made leafs fly around and made the concentration hard for the players since the often had to start again when leafs had to be taken off the course.

It was the day of the team play finals and it was close results in both classes. In the ladies class the German girls’ have woken on a better side than yesterday. Now they were playing like the favorites they were before the tournament and took up the chase with Sweden, Netherlands and Austria. Sweden had severe problems on the beton course in the wind leaving the medals to the other tree.

The longer the day the more lead for the Germans and in the end the victory margin was 15 strokes. But in silver place there had to be a sudden death play-off between Netherlands and Austria. This ended on lane 2 on eternit with and Austrian victory.

In the men’s class the first round of eternit saw a unique incident happening. Germanys Walter Erlbruch decided to break the tournament in total after a bad start of the day. There were no visible illness from Walter and it all appeared like an act of share disappointment. This led to a change of players and substitute Martin Stöckle was in the team from lane 17 on the first round. And when Martin entered the team then the German machine started to work as the favorites they were. Slowly they crushed all opponents including Sweden that had a bad day. The Swedish play opened up for a fight for silver and bronze between Switzerland and Austria.

Through a sharp finish the Swiss team could secure the silver two strokes ahead of the Austrians.

Individually Bianca Zodrow, Germany, is in the lead at 191, one stroke ahead of Natasja Klarenbeek, Netherlands. Natasja has played dream golf on the beton course with 24-23-27-23 = 97. This is a new world record on 4 rounds for ladies on beton. The old record was held by Sandra Bengtsson on 99 from Hilzingen in 2008. In third position for tomorrow is Karin Heschl, Austria.

Individually on the men’s side we still have yesterday’s demon player Achim Braungart-Zink in top. He was playing almost as good today and broke the world record for 3 rounds on beton with 22-22-25 = 69 (old record held by Erik Tiekstra on 70 from Geldrop in 2006) and 4 rounds with 22-22-25-24 = 93 (old record hold by Tommy Blixt on 95 from Lamego 2009).

What is a bit interesting is that Achim was not the best player of the day. This was Reto Sommer of Switzerland with one shot better than Achim. This makes the margin between Achim and Reto being 7 strokes before tomorrow’s stroke play finals. In third position we find Austrian closer Christian Gobetz another two shots behind.

Tomorrow is the stroke play finals.

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