Jeremy Freiburghaus had missed the last two cuts at the tournaments in South Africa. The training break obviously helped "I'm happy to be playing tournaments again. I started from hole 10 with '0' expectation, the pleasing result was four birdies on the first five holes," the man from Graubünden comments on his round of 67 or five under par at the Iberostar Real Club de Golf Novo Sancti Petri in Cadiz. Especially the approaches to the greens were "excellent" and made the round "very stress-free". Round 2 was different: Freiburghaus had to concede two double bogeys on the first three holes in strong winds, and it continued to be almost as difficult; in the end, he needed 15 strokes more than on the previous day, and Freiburghaus was correspondingly far behind in the intermediate rankings. With two birdies at the beginning of the third round (from hole 10), the man from Graubünden made a comeback, the 70 card brought him back into the top 25. In the final round, the player from the Domat/Ems Golf Club finally set off the birdie fireworks, especially with an early series of fours on holes two to five. After the only stroke loss, Freiburghaus countered with an eagle and two more birdies, among other things. That resulted in a 65 or seven under par. No other professional in the field shot that low. Clearly, the best Swiss made another big leap in the rankings. In the end, at -4, he was six strokes off the winner, the Swede Jens Dantorp. The latter had started with two double bogeys in round one, but in the two final rounds Dantorp remained faultless with 11 birdies.

Second best Swiss on rank seven is Benjamin Rusch at -2. The Thurgau native also played his best result of the day with a 69 at the end. Rusch started with four birdies on holes one to four, but this was followed by three stroke losses in a row. Thanks to two more birdies on the back nine, the player from Golfclub Lipperswil improved his ranking by seven places. For Rusch, the tournament in Spain was exactly the 80th event on the Challenge Tour, up to now the 15th place at the start had been his best result of the season.

Marco Iten and Robert Foley also qualified after two rounds. In the final, the two Swiss played together in the flight, with Iten coming back into the clubhouse with a 69 and Foley with 70 strokes. Both had big problems in rounds two and three, leaving them in 56th and 58th place in the end.

Stefan Waldvogel

Article retrieved from www.swissgolf.ch