The course itself is very good and it is in excellent condition. The key to the course seems to be to get your tee shots into play, the fairways are very narrow, especially on the difficult back nine (which is 400m longer than the front nine!), and the rough is pretty wild once you get more than 3-4m off the fairway. The greens are fairly large and have really nice surfaces to putt on so the course offers you the chance to be putting for birdie on many occasions if you avoid trouble off the tee.
Day 1
The top Finnish player on Day 1 was Antti Joutsen from Wiurila who played a good round of 71 with 2 birdies, one bogey and 15 pars. Antti was followed by Petri Lehto (72) and Keijo Jaakkola, Kimmo Kemppi (73). Niko Helin from Kytäjä ended up with a round of 76 during which Niko reported to have hit it "all over the place".
Andy Fowlie had an unusually good round with 5 birdies and only 2 bogeys to end up with a score of 69, good enough for a tie for 4th place after the first day. Andy's comments were as follows:
That was a great start to the week, I have been struggling with my ball-striking for the last 2-3 weeks so I was not very confident going into the round, especially with the way this course places a high premium on accurate tee shots. Once we got going I felt quite comfortable out on the course, hit 11/14 fairways and hit it close to the hole all day, this was a very solid round. I was part of a very good three-ball today, Felix Banzhaf from Germany was the best on the day with a 68 and Antti Joutsen was also under par with a 71, so we were a combined -8 for the day, it can really help if the whole group is playing well.
Below you can see some pictures from the course and the nearby hotel where all the players are staying, the weather has not exactly been cooperating at the start of the tournament week.