The event was won in fine style by Timo Tuunanen (EGS), one of the most consistently good players on the Mid Tour over the past few years, who recorded the equal best score (77) on the difficult first day and an excellent 71 to clsoe out the win on Sunday. Bradley Hennier of the host club managed a great performance to finish second in the event, three shots behind, leaving tens of lower handicapped players far behind in the process. Petri Lehto (HGK), playing his 4th round of 2015, took third position after rounds of 77 and 75.
Kytäjä's players had a solid but not spectacular opening to the season with Niko Helin and Andy Fowlie posting identical scores of 80, 77 (+13) to share 11th place, 9 shots behind the leader. Petri Syrjänen enjoyed the lowest Kytäjä round of the weekend with his Sunday 76 to finish in T36th place on +18 with Riku Roine 3 shots further behind in 49th position. Jouko Hartikainen missed the cut by 2 shots after his Saturday round of 89.
The first real tournament of the year is always a bit strange in Finland because of the long winter break, there are plenty of things that you lose touch with during the off-season but one of the things that comes back most slowly for me is the judgement about when to go for things and when to be patient, another thing is the thinking needed to make the right misses. In addition my winter practice was quite interrupted by back problems and my ball-striking is not where it would usually be by this time of the season and I definitely struggled with that during the weekend.
For the most part I managed to get quite a lot out of my limited game over the weekend, the Saturday conditions were very familiar to me from many years playing in Scotland and I felt like I did a good job of playing within my current capabilities rather than trying to hit all the shots that I might have taken on if I had been swinging better. My round of 80 (+8) was not a disaster (only 3 off the lead) and it was a good recovery after startign my season with a double bogey and following that up with another on on my 4th hole. There was a lot of good in that round when you consider that I added a back nine triple bogey to the two early double bogeys... the other 15 holes were played in one over par, on a day when 77 was the best score.
On Sunday I really had nothing much in the ball-striking department. I hit only 3 fairways and had a whole load of "left going left" tee shots and approaches. Somehow I managed to play the first nine holes in level par, but I have to say that it was probably the worst level par nine holes I have ever seen from shot quality point of view, before finally paying the price for yet another poor strike when my approach to the 11th green was a bit heavy and rolled back into the bunker in an unplayable position (double bogey 6). Another 6 followed after a duffed chip on the 12th and I limped my way to a 77.
Overall, this was a good result considering the state of my game... but I will need to hit the ball a lot better than that if I want to be competitive in anything this year.