30 Jun 2009 at 07:15 | Published by:  | Views: 6451 | News search

1st R. Giroldini, 2nd P. Porta, 3rd L. Ciompi, 4th C. Santopietro.  (Photo by Anna Bandera 2009)

During last weekend the overall team and individual Italian Championships have been played in Monza (miniaturegolf course).

The program of the tournament was as follows:
- on saturday 4 rounds for the individual + team event
- on sunday 2 more rounds for individual + team event, 1 more "final" round mass-start for the best 36 men and 9 ladies, 1 more "superfinal" round for the best 9 men and 6 ladies

During the first day GSP Vergiate and MC Monza took immediately the lead respectively on men team and ladies team events. The two title defenders confirmed their superiority with quite a big margin on all the other teams.
Vergiate lead the men team competition with 11 strokes advantage on home team MC Monza and 15 strokes on MGC Novi Ligure.
After first day the ladies team event was a tight match between MC Monza and GSP Vergiate that were separated by only one single stroke.

The tournament was interrupted on 1st day at 6 p.m. due to a thunderstorm when the 4th round was running. At the end of the first day the individual leaders were Paolo Porta (MGC Novi Ligure) among men with 61 strokes (20-22-19) and Anna Bandera (MC Monza) / Sara Marchiani (GSP Cusano) tied among ladies with 72 strokes.

On Sunday the 4th round was completed with a mass-start and then two more rounds for the team had been played.
About men teams, GSP Vergiate increased its advantage and won the title with 33 strokes on MC Monza home team. There had been a very close match for 2nd-5th place with 4 teams in only 8 strokes after 6 rounds.
2nd place for MC Monza as previously said, 3rd place for GSP Cusano (only one stroke behind Monza), 4th place for Südtirol team (7 strokes behind Monza) and 5th place for MGC Novi Ligure (8 strokes behind Monza).
About ladies teams, MC Monza took an easy victory with 24 strokes advantage on GSP Vergiate and 33 on GSP Cusano.

The individual events offered some very close matches with a very high playing level.
About men, round after round it was quite clear that the match would have been between the two most popular and strong italian players of the last 10 years, Rudi Giroldini (GSP Vergiate), title defender and looking for his 3rd title (after those won in 2004 and 2008), and Paolo Porta, looking for his 6th title (after those won in 2000, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006). Rudi took the lead after 6th rounds with 2 strokes margin and he mantained that until the end of the tournaments (two equal final rounds for Rudi and Paolo, 22-20). Rudi ended with 167 strokes (20.88 average), Paolo with 169 strokes (21.13 average)
3rd place for a very surprising young player, Lorenzo Ciompi (ASMC Follonica), current Italian Youth champion that managed to reach the podium at his first overall championships played. He got a really impressive result, 171 strokes (21.42 average) with all rounds between 20 and 22 strokes. After this result he's no more a surprise but a very nice reality of Italian minigolf.
4th place for Claudio Santopietro, 172 strokes (21.50 average) that lost the chance to go to the playoff for 3rd place at the last lane, where he made a "2".

About ladies, the match was between Anna Bandera (MC Monza), title defender, and Sara Marchiani (GSP Cusano), Italian Champion in 2007. After 8 rounds Anna took the victory with 181 strokes (22.63 average) on Sara who ended with 183 strokes (22.88 average). 3rd place for Paola Tecchio (GSP Vergiate) with 192 strokes (24.000 average)

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