If there’s one sight in golf you don’t like to see, it’s your ball apologetically dribbling back to your feet after an attempted putt up a slope doesn’t quite make it. Every cloud has a silver lining, though.
For Michele Thomson and her Great Britain team 3 colleagues, there was a silver medal too. As for golfing gold? Well, the Ice men and women cometh at Gleneagles as Team Iceland took the ultimate prize on a historic day over the PGA Cent-enary course in the European Mixed Team Championships.
It was almost a Grand Old Duke of York moment on the 18th for Thomson, meanwhile. Paired with fellow Scot, Connor Syme, in a foursomes strokeplay format which had men and women partnering each other for the first time in a professional setting, her eagle attempt on the 18th went marching up to the top of the hill … and came marching back down again.
Given affairs at the head of the leaderboard at that point would have had the proverbial duck wincing, it could have been a costly calamity as the tussle for the medals intensified.
“I wasn’t quite sure what we needed at the last but it’s never nice seeing your ball coming back to you at any time,” Thomson said.
Syme salvaged the situation, though, and dunted his effort up to within tap-in distance. The resulting par gave the duo a two-under 70.
Added to an earlier 72 from Meghan MacLaren and Liam Johnston, who fought back well after an opening double-bogey, that left GB with a two-under aggregate of 142 as they secured second place, a shot behind the jubilant Icelanders who mustered a three-under team tally.
“Thankfully, Connor did a better job when he had the same putt,” said Thomson with a chuckle. It had been a team effort.
Off the course, meanwhile, the golf writers trying to follow it just about needed to call on the combined resources of the National Association of Mathematics Advisers. We weren’t alone, mind you. “It was a little bit confusing at the start,” admitted Valdis Thora Jonsdottir, who was part of the victorious Iceland team. “It was great fun though.”
The venture into a mixed team format for one day – the men’s and women’s team championships which have been running since Wednesday concludes today – certainly stoked up intrigue and interest.
After a one-man-and-his-dog start to the week on the crowd front, the healthy galleries yesterday provided an encouraging backdrop to affairs. Even the weather played its part. The Icelanders played an even bigger part. The may be an island nation of just 320,000 people but they continue to prove that guid things come in sma’ bulk.
Icelandic sporty folk have been European champions in a variety of sporting disciplines down the years, from the shot putt to pole vaulting. The celebrated footballer, Eidur Gudjohnsen, was a Champions League winner with Barcelona too. Gold in golf was a first, though. The country actually has more courses per head of population than any other nation in the world and while the season can be shorter than Jimmy Krankie’s semmit – it tends to be May to September – they continue to flourish in this Royal & Ancient game.
Olafia Kristindottir, the first Icelandic woman to play on the LPGA Tour, and Axel Boasson combined for a one-under 71 but it was the late thrust by the pairing of Jonsdottir and the experienced 42-year-old Birgir Hafthorsson which ultimately proved decisive in the final reckoning.
A brace of birdies at 16 and 17 upped the ante and when Jonsdottir holed an audacious putt for an unlikely birdie on the last, the Icelanders had put themselves in a handy position.
Nobody could catch them. “This is something very special,” said Hafthorsson.
Others had a chance to savour that special feeling too. The Spanish team were going along quite the thing but a ruinous bogey, bogey, bogey finish from Pedro Oriol and Silvia Banon in a 75 didn’t help.
Scott Fernandez, whose grannie was from Glasgow, and Noemi Jimenez conjured a birdie, birdie finish in a 68 but they dropped into a play-off for the bronze medal with Sweden.
Johanna Gustavsson holed a raking birdie putt for the Swedes in the shoot-out to nab the podium place.
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