Lindell's performance in Scotland lacklustre in terms of results – "The team spirit is still good"
Oliver Lindell ended his challenging week at Carnoustie with a score of 70 (-2), which also means a total score of -2. Even before the competition began, Lindell considered this course to be clearly the most difficult of the three, and this is also underlined by the scores achieved on the courses this week. An overall score of -2 means a ranking of around 90th place this week.
"My goal today was to improve my score, and I didn't succeed, so there's not much else to say about that. I played well today, but it was just too challenging to get putts in with that wind. The weather forecast said the temperature today would feel like one degree above zero. I had to put on all the gear I could find because of the strong wind and rain."
Although this week's results may seem like a minor setback for Lindell, who is having a fantastic debut season, no major conclusions or concerns can be drawn from this competition. The conditions were completely exceptional, and the remaining challenges of the season will be very different.
My game is still in good shape, and this was the kind of week that I would just like to forget. The weather was frankly awful, and this wasn't really a qualifying round – there wasn't much point in playing on Friday. It's a shame that I didn't really get to see the Old Course, as I was just trying to survive out there. Now we're just looking ahead to next week's competition in Madrid," Lindell summed up his feelings.
Instead of the original four-round plan, the competition was played over three rounds, as playing in strong winds on Saturday proved impossible. The results up to that point were invalidated. This put Lindell in a situation he had never experienced before, as his birdie was wiped off the scoreboard.
To the delight of the home crowd, Robert MacIntyre of Scotland won the competition, playing three rounds with a score of 66. This gave him an excellent overall score of -18. The other Finnish player in the competition, Tapio Pulkkanen, showed strong form for the first time in a long time, playing a total score of -10. This earned him a place in T15, which is not enough for the Kotka native to secure his playing rights for next season. For a long time, it looked as if his excellent performance would come at an important moment, but now it seems likely that Pulkkanen will have to go through the qualifiers at the end of the season, unless places in future competitions become available by some means.