Christofer Blomstrand is back home in Sweden this week for the Nordea Masters as he aims to take his opportunity on the European Tour.
The 24-year-old has been campaigning on the Sunshine Tour this year after focusing on the Nordic Golf League (NGL) in 2014. He has had career-defining victories on both tours.
On the NGL last year he won the Race to Himmerland tournament that propelled him 743 places up the world rankings as he broke into the top-1000 golfers in the world. He backed that up by winning the Sunshine Tour’s Zambia Sugar Open, which pushed him up 597 places in the rankings to sit 375th. He has improved since then and currently holds 344th in the world.
Victory in Zambia had a big impact on the Swede. ‘I think that I need to play a few more tournaments. My biggest goal when I came down here was to finish in the top 50 so I can get into those events with the European Tour next year. It’s a good way to do it and hopefully I can keep it going.’ he said after winning at Lusaka Golf Club.
He has already played events on the European Tour this year and missed the cut at the Trophee Hassan II before sharing 50th at the AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open. His worldwide statistics for the season include six cuts made in seven starts, three top-30 finishes on the Sunshine Tour and a top-five finish on the Challenge Tour last week.
Blomstrand is coming off a tie for fourth at the D+D REAL Czech Challenge that included a second-round 63. The Swede has a penchant for shooting low and fired a final-round 65 to snatch the Himmerland title and a Sunday 63 in Zambia.
A member of the Falsterbo Golf Klub in Sweden, Blomstrand will hope a low round is near as he looks for a career-best performance on the European Tour. The youngster will hope to gain as much experience as possible as well over the first two rounds from his veteran playing partners Mark Foster and Terry Pilkadaris.
Another local to look out for this week is Kristoffer Broberg. The talented golfer had a breakthrough 2012 season that saw him come from outside the top-1000 golfers in the world to sit 79th by the end of the year. The 29-year-old’s meteoric rise was thanks to four wins on the Challenge Tour, for which he received compliments from none other than Lee Westwood.
He slipped outside the top-200 in 2013 but has slowly been working himself back up the rankings since then. An exceptionally talented golfer, his effort since 2013 was rewarded with a tie for 32nd at the Open Championship in 2014, a runner-up finish that same year at the Scottish Open and a breakthrough win at the BMW Masters, a European Tour Finals Series event of last year.
As a result, Broberg has climbed back into the worlds top-100 and currently sits 93rd. This year he has two top-20 finishes to his name, which came at the Qatar Masters and Maybank Malaysia Championship. He missed the cut at Wentworth last week, but should be confident of a good performance having finished in a tie for 13th last year and posted further top-30 finishes in 2011 and 2012 at the Nordea Masters.
South African players in the field include Haydn Porteous, Zander Lombard, Justin Walters, Ulrich van den Berg, Jean Hugo, Tjaart van der Walt and Jbe’ Kruger.
