Keijo Jaakola, a winner on the Mid Tour earlier in the year at Espoo GS (and on many other occasions), had a fantastic start to the event, birdieing his first two holes before holing from 80m for an eagle on his 3rd hole. He kept the momentum going, despite a double bogey, to finish with an excellent opening round of 70 and hold a 4 stroke lead.
Bradley Hennier from Vuosaari and Andy Fowlie from Kytäjä each scored 74 to share second place with Petri Lehto, Timo Tuunanen and Jyri Siivonen a stroke further behind after rounds of 75. Andy's round was rather the opposite of Keijo's as he recovered from a terrible start (two double bogeys in the first 5 holes).
A good weekend for Kytäjä was completed by Petri Syrjänen's excellent 11th place finish, his best ever Mid Tour result, after rounds of 76 and 80. Kytäjä are in a strong position in the team rankings and will qualify once again for the Mid Team SM at Aulanko towards the end of the season.
I have never had any success whatsoever at Nordcenter, actually my 5 worst scoress in Finland have all come on that Fream course, and my best score on the course before this weekend was a 79... so this weekend was something of an improvement.
When I started the first round with a double bogey, and added another one 45 minutes later, it would have been easy for another poor score to follow but I knew that I was hitting the ball solidly and just kept playing my game. I really did not make any big mistakes after that and played the last 31 holes in level par (3 shots better than anyone else) despite missing quite a number of decent birdie chances from 3-4m.
In the 36 holes I did not miss a green by more than 5m and did not ever have to hit a provisional, that made things rather stress free for the most part. It was good to be in the final group again (for the 7th time, and 2nd time this season) and to play a good round when it was needed, but once again Keijo Jaakkola was too good over the 2 days and Timo Tuunanen's final round was excellent so I had to settle for 3rd, but this has been a really good streak for me in the Mid Tour with a 1st (last event in 2014), a 2nd (Espoo earlier this year) and now a 3rd in my last 6 events.
This has been a difficult year for me overall on the golf course, but I feel good about my game again as the last events of the season approach.