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Copenhagen Open 2011 is over
Finally we had the spare time from work to write a story about the tournament - see below.
All fell in place this year for the local hero Karl Johan "KJ" Nybo, who have had some rough months having his first child almost three months before scheduled birthdate. "KJ" was actually unsure, that he had the time to practice, and the mental energy, to even play the tournament this year!- All results are published on pdga.com. - Results from Friday's doubles are here. - Pictures and videos in Media/downloads.  But good he did, since he played the most steady play in the tournament and an excellent final with 8 birdies and 1 par (25). Throughout the rest of the tournament he only had one single bogey on the long and sometimes punishing Copenhagen Open course. "KJ" won the Open trophy and 6.100 DKK (more then €800) in the end by 8 before Markus Källström and Ville Piippo who tied for second (Ville won the trophy on play-off). Fourth came Oscar Stenfelt from the second final group, who passed Seppo Paju, that had some troubles with his putts in the final. From a local point of view we were also excited to see Jeppe Ask on a tied 6th place - he only has a rating of 955 and played his best this weekend. In the Women division it was not determined until the very last putt, who could come out victorious and win the 2.850 DKK (about €380), but the European Champion Camilla Jernberg was the calmest before Lydie Hellgren. In the Master division the home crowd could once again be pleased about a Danish winner, Søren Larsen, who actually was a co-designer and course planner - as well as a webdesigner - of the course 7 years back, when it all started in Valbyparken. He kept his head cool to beat long time rival and friend Robert Busazy by 4 and could take home 3.800 DKK (€510). The two of them have probably known each other for 25 years! The field this year was the toughest ever with 14 players with a 1000+ PDGA rating and only 5 players in Open division below a 940 PDGA rating (3 of those were National wildcards). In Master division there were only 3 players below 930, but none below 910! This probably due to the new PDGA EuroTour rules, which give the best players some advantages in registration, where we each year experience the massive "reload-registration-page-as-soon-as-registration-start" frenzy. In fact the automatic fetch of rating from pdga.com caused the PDGA website to crash for a few minutes, where we had 35 registrations the first 5 minutes and almost 100 registrations within the first hour! As a result of many disappointed players, who couldn't play even though fast on their computers, we decided to host a pre-tournament for 8 of our wildcard spots. 16 players decided to come, pay the 200 DKK entry fee and take their chance - as far as from Finland and a bit up in Norway and Sweden. A nice spice and warm-up to the main tournament, which all contestants found exciting, and even the unlucky just behind the 66 cut held their heads high and joined their friends in the morning as caddies or spectators. As always - are we tempted to say - the weather was nice with almost no clouds and about 15 degrees celcius in the middle of the day. Some wind still though, but excellent disc golf weather nevertheless. Only drawback was for the volunteers that needed to pack down the last of the course in hail and rain - big thanks and respect to the last group of club members, who braved the masses of water from the sky at 18:00 on Sunday. Many thanks also to the planning team, staff and all volunteers, whom without the Copenhagen Open would not have become the tournament it was this year - and is every year. And a big thank you to our sponsors this year, who made a very big prize money payout possible (about 55.000 DKK = €7.380). As a last note we would like to add, that we strongly hope we can return next year with 27 holes and a 135 players field, so book your calendar now for end of April 2012 and the greatest Copenhagen Open ever. See you next year and thank you for the support of our tournament, that gives us the urge to run this tournament year after year. |
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