24 Jun 2011 at 22:24 | Published by: Hans | Views: 10223 | News search

Jonas Gustafsson, best player of the weekend.  (Photo by Annelie Larsson 2011)

Last weekend was the second out of tree playing weekends for the Swedish Elitserie. The weekend was played on eternit in Jönköping and the weather forecast was already before the weekend promising better weather on Saturday than on Sunday.

So the teams started of early on Saturday with the aim on playing as many matches as possible on Saturday leaving less matches to Sunday where the forecasts said rain. 5 matches were played until the rain came already on Saturday afternoon and two matches where left to be played on Sunday. One match in round 6 could be finished before the rain.

One fact making the modus in Elitserien very weather dependent is the match play round robin modus where all meets each other. This means that it’s not easily possible to reduce the number of rounds due to bad weather, in fact the rules have this year been sharpened by the Swedish Federation stating that if not all seven rounds are played the whole weekend shall be set as canceled.

But the weather on Sunday was heavy rains as well and the teams started to play the 3 remaining matches in round 6 under 3 tents that they moved around the course, letting all 10 players in a match play before they moved. This is of course very time-consuming and includes lots of drying and cleaning since 15 of 18 lanes where open for the weather. But in 3-4 hours the round 6 was finished by 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Exactly what was then happening is hard to tell but after a meeting with the referee and the teams the referee decided to cancel the last round with reference that it could be played before the 7 new rounds in Tantogården i July with hopefully better weather.

All teams headed for home starting to prepare for this decision. But since this decision lacks support in the Swedish rules there was soon a debate on Internet about it and the Swedish Sport Committee had to call for a meeting where they should discuss and decide on how to handle this situation on Wednesday the 22nd. All teams could then formally protest on the referee call before this meeting. No protest was handed in and the Swedish Sport Committee had to choose between:

1. Follow the rules by the book and cancel the whole weekend even if 6 out of seven rounds were played.
2. Declaring that all teams in round 7 was to be given WO in their matches, meaning that the round counted as 0 points and 0 strokes for all.

The decision was to go for alternative two meaning that weekend two only included 6 matches.

So what was actually happening on the course in those 6 matches? Well first of all one teamed once again showed their best side. Uppsala won all six matches with great results and had quite big margins in all matches except against the home team Jönköping where the victory was only with 1 stroke in the end. Worth noticing is that all 30 individual results from Uppsala was 23 or below with an average of 20,8 on the team. Uppsala also managed a blue team result of 99 against Gullbergsbro.

The home club of Jönköping had a disappointing first round and was really on their toes to make the second weekend much better. And their scores where much better and so they won 4 of 6 games, only losing by one stroke against Uppsala and two strokes against Sjöviken. Jönköping is now a bit safer for continues playing in the Elitserien for next season but still have a too big margin up to fight for the medals this year. Best in Jönköping and best overall was the reigning World Champion Jonas Gustafsson with the only blue average of all on 19,7.

Skoghall on the other hand once again showed a good team performance awarding them 8 points and a second position in the table. Best in Skoghall this weekend was the two veterans Lars Kvael and Stefan Björk on 21,8 in average.

The leaders from the first round, Södertälje is now in third position after claiming 6 points this weekend. A good and consistence performance except the last rainy tent game against Sjöviken where the results were flying a bit too high in the end.

Sjöviken on the other hand had a disappointing weekend, missing their best player Filip Johansson, who became a student, in the line-up. Only 4 points to the team from the south gives them a middle position for the last weekend.

Tantogården once again had a though weekend and only eight points so far in the Elitserie now means that the most merited club in Sweden with most seasons in the highest league are now in real trouble in the last round. Same points but 13 strokes worse than Mjölby after two rounds gives then a current 7th position in the table meaning degradation. Lucky for them is that last round is on home ground on the surface they normally are the best on, Beton. Still on last position is the team from Gothenburg, Gullbergsbro with only 4 points.

Team of this weekend was:
Jonas Gustafsson, Jönköping, 19,7
Anders Olsson, Uppsala, 20,5
Carl-Johan Ryner, Uppsala, 20,7
Lars Brown, Uppsala, 20,7
Thomas Pölder, Uppsala, 20,8

Another sign of the domination of Uppsala right now in Swedish Minigolf is that the last men in the team Fredrik Persson this overtook as number one on the Swedish Eternit ranking after 24 consecutive months at position 1 by Carl-Johan Ryner.

Last weekend of the Elitserien is played the 23-24th of July in Tantogården on Beton.

» results
» photo gallery
» Discussion at Swedish Forum about the rain break decisions (Swedish only)
» Decision taken by Swedish Sport Committee (Swedish only)

SHARE Share Tweet