Malta’s golf team, composed of Andy Borg, Ruud Critien, J.J. Micallef and Luc Schembri, managed to bring home the bronze medal in the European Team Shield Championship (ETSC).
The competition was organised by the European Golf Association and hosted by the Hungarian Golf Federation at the Pannonia Golf & Country Club a few weeks ago, the Malta Golf Association said in a statement.
Twelve other countries fielded a men’s team in the second edition of the ETSC. These were Armenia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Macedonia, Albania, Romania, Latvia, Croatia, Liechtenstein, Serbia, Turkey and Hungary.
The format of the championship was a stroke play qualifier on the first day, followed by three-match play knock-out rounds, each consisting of one foursomes and two single matches.
In the qualifier round, Malta’s score of +3 led Bulgaria’s +6, Serbia’s +8, Croatia’s +8, Turkey’s +15, Hungary’s +18, Liechtenstein’s +18 and Latvia’s +24, with these eight countries advancing to the matchplay knock-out. Ukraine, Albania, Macedonia and Armenia played each other in a round -robin format to determine the bottom placings.
Borg registered the best score for the round, -3, one better than Ryan Staykov, of Bulgaria.
Malta’s top placing pitted them against Latvia in the quarter-finals of the match play knock-out.
Borg and co. prevailed in two singles matches and lost the foursomes to book their place in the semi-finals, thus bettering their showing in last year’s event both through their stroke play qualifier placing as well as by reaching the semis.
With Serbia beating Turkey, Croatia winning against Hungary and Liechtenstein against Bulgaria, the semi-finals line-up was: Croatia vs Liechtenstein and Serbia vs Malta.
In Serbia, who went on to beat rivals Croatia in the final, our players encountered very tough players, losing all three matches.
This left Malta and Liechtenstein to battle it out for third place – countries that bonded fantastically well from the first edition of this tournament, even though it was Liechtenstein who knocked out Malta in the first stage of the match play phase last year.
This year, Team Malta were not to be denied a medal placing as they comprehensively defeated Liechtenstein, winning the three games 7-5, 5-4 and 2-1.
Malta’s participation in this tournament was made possible through the funding received from the R&A and SportMalta.