The damp weather has not stopped Kytäjä golfers from competing! This has been a busy couple of weeks with many team and fun competitions (Kytäjä Cup, Captains Cup, Margareta and 2 gins, Ystävägolf) being played as well as the continuation of the kuukausikilpailu and the reikäpeli events.
The kuukausikilpailu this month has been remarkable for the amount of "handicap smashing" rounds... three players have scored 40 points or more on the South East course including an incredible 46 points for Markku Virtanen! In any normal month Jesper Grimbergen (42 points) or Mika Segerman (40 points) would have had a great chance to win... but this month they are not even close. The amount of competitors in the kuukausikilpailu is also very healthy with about 45 on the South East course and almost 40 on the North West. The challenge tour guys will be using the South East course this week but for those of you who have not yet played there are still 48 hours remaining for you to play your July round on the North West course.
The reikäpeli events are also progressing at full speed... the most recent round of matches proved to be difficult for some of the defending champions - Pasi Puputti was narrowly beaten in the Miesten Reikäpelimestaruus by Jouko Hartikainen and, in the Reikäpeli Cup, Riitta Kiviranta-Kärkkäinen and Jorma Kärkkäinen were defeated by Pirjo and Seppo Santala.
This week is an important one in the short history of Kytäjä Golf. The challenge tour event will give an opportunity for top players from many countries to play the course which tests us every week and will give great exposure to Kytäjä. It will be extremely interesting to see how they manage to negotiate their way round our course and to see how they manage to score.
I think that the course is in great condition for the event and the longer rough makes a difference to the scoring possibilities for the players, hitting fairways will be more important than usual at Kytäjä. One thing that is a bit of a shame is how soft the course is after all the rain of the past weeks, in my opinion the main defence of the South East course against better players is the difficulty of hitting greens and then putting on the greens... the soft conditions (compared to many previous summers) make that a lot easier to manage than usual. I hope that there is a bit of wind during the competition days to show the players what a great test the South East course can be.
Overall I predict that there will be a big difference between the low scores and the high scores this week... I think that some players will find a lot of trouble waiting for them and but I also think that we will see scores of 64 or 63, especially if the weather is calm.
Lets see how it unfolds!