ECCO TOUR at Sand Valley – First winners and NEW COURSE RECORD!

ECCO TOURS Sand Valley Spring Series consists of these three separate tournaments:
– Sand Valley Polish Masters – by Upgame 9-11.4.2023
– GEBWELL Championship 13-15.4.2023
– Sand Valley Spring Series Final – by ECCO 17-19.4.2023

The historic Spring Series of three separate tournaments started last Sunday 9th of April and we have found the first winners. Sand Valley Polish Masters – by Upgame (9-11.4) was won by the 26-year-old Norwegian Andreas Halvorsen. He has lived in the USA for several years and tried his hand at PGA Tour Canada and PGA Tour Latinoamerica without making his big breakthrough.

This week, it all clicked for the Norwegian. He shot both of the first two rounds in 67 strokes, and that was enough to share the lead with Sweden’s Oliver Gillberg before the last 18 holes. Halvorsen quickly took the lead when he birdied the first hole, and he followed it up with another one on hole 5. He was two under after the first nine holes, and on the back nine he added two more birdies on holes 13 and 14, and then led by a comfortable four strokes. The victory ended in three strokes when Halvorsen made par on the remaining four holes.

Sweden’s Christofer Blomstrand took the second place with strokes behind the winning Norwegian. Iceland’s Axel Boasson had the best score of the final round with five shots under par and he was thus able to climb his way up to the third place. Fourth place was shared by four players – the two Danes Andreas Hillersborg Sørensen and Sebastian Wiis and the two Swedes Oliver Gillberg and Jesper Svensson.

There was also another kind of winner during the last day of the tournament – Icelandic Sigurdur A. Gardarsson broke the 9 year old course record of 66 (-6) shots by Berni Reiter with an impressive 65 shots, or 7 under the PAR. This was not to last for another 9 years though, as only 2 days later the Danish Mathias Gladbjerg broke the record yet again by hitting an impressive 64 (-8) shots today – during the first day of GEBWELL Championship tournament (13-15.4).

Gladbjerg is naturally leading the charts with -8 after the first day and three players are following him close by at 6 under PAR; Björn Åkesson and Charlie Lindh from Sweden and Alexander Frances from Denmark. Next two days will be exciting!

“Players seem to have enjoyed their stay so far and I have to say our greenkeeping staff has done amazing job at getting the course ready for the tournament! This is a new type of event for our Team and being 12 days long – we really need to keep our full focus all the time so that everything runs perfectly till the end” says Antti Pohjonen, CEO of Sand Valley.

We asked some of the players what they thought of Sand Valley after the first rounds. It’s a rather special course. I have not seen one like it before”, says 19-year-old Jens Kristian Thysted – “I think it’s cool. It requires precision and creativity, as the greens are raised and there are lots of runoffs, he continues.”

Let’s keep playing, more information to follow shortly!

More information: https://eccotour.org/