Last weekend, 9 and 10 October, the Disc Golf Club walkabout was able to hold the Bern Open, its traditional autumn tournament on the Gurten. The Bern Open is one of six Swisstour tournaments this year.
Already on Thursday the construction on the hilly terrain began and on Friday around 2 pm a challenging course was ready for practice rounds. This year, thanks to the farms Andrist and Balsiger, all the classic tracks of the Bern Open could be played, including "Balsigers Chrump", "Bäupmoos" and "Voguloch". For the first time, walkabout organized the Bern Open with a golf start. This allowed the field to be expanded to 100 players, which met the demand.
On Saturday, the first flight started shortly after 8 o'clock in the morning in quite dense fog and cool temperatures. Fortunately, the visibility improved relatively quickly and only a blanket of high fog remained. The clearly best and only bogey free round on this day was achieved with a rating of 1042 with – 8 Stephan Müller from Disc Dimension Winterthur in the MP40 category. As a highlight of the first day, Jannis Ziswiler of the Woodpeckers Sursee succeeded in the only Ace of the tournament on hole 17 "Wohäre geisch?".
On Sunday, the weather was already much better at the beginning than the day before and the gurten was bathed in golden light by the morning sun. So the first flights, now divided into categories, could start in the second half of the tournament in good weather conditions. In the course of the day it became relatively warm and beautiful, which attracted quite a lot of walkers on the belts – not only to the delight of the players. And finally, on Sunday, for the first time in the history of Swiss disc golf, an unannounced doping control of Anti-Doping Switzerland was carried out.
With the second round, many rather close races at the top of the various categories were decided. In the case of the two juniors, there was even a jump-off before the winner was determined: Luke Ferro won after 4 more lanes and strong putts ahead of Lino Tresch. In the FP40+ category, Doris Rubin was third and Iris Beyeler Ferro took first place with just 2 throws ahead of Julia Burkhardt. At the FPO Martina Kammermann was third and Melanie Meuter won with 3 strokes ahead of Nathalie Holloköi. Werner Kuster clearly won the MP60+ ahead of Turi Küttel in second place and Volker Pittlik in third place. In the MP50+ category, Paul Francz won with a solid 2. Round gold by 2 points ahead of Jürgen Disch (silver) and Richard Kreifeur (bronze). Alex Kuster and Martin Jenny fought a close race for 2nd place in the MP40+, which Jenny then won with a throw difference. Stephan Müller took first place in this category with 5 throws ahead of the second-placed. In the largest category of the Bern Open 21 – MPO, with 55 athletes, Christoph Weiss reached third place with a solid 2. Round at -4 and a rating of 1004. Emil Barbe won silver with the most birdies in one round – 10 of them. And the winner is: With a two strokes advantage and two strong laps, lukas Schär takes the golden victory at a total of -11. Great performance!
Congratulations to all winners! And at this point a big thank you to the spotters and to all helpers.
