2024 EUROPEAN HIGHLIGHTS: EVELIINA WINS WORLDS! 🏆
🌟 SAVED THE BEST FOR LAST 🌟
As the European Highlights series comes to a close, what better way to end than with Eveliina Salonen as World Champion!
Lynchburg, Virginia (USA) was hot and humid and many of the Finnish players who made their way across the Atlantic expressed how challenging the conditions were for them to play 5 long rounds!
After a solid round of -4, Eveliina was only T5 after R1, 6 strokes behind @holyn.handley who had blazed through the wooded New London course in -10. With a tied hot round in R2, Salonen clawed her way up the leaderboard, cutting the gap in half, and by R3 the 3 strokes that separated Handley and Salonen were gone. Amazing determination and resilience from the Finn!
But this being the @pdga World Championships, we had only just passed the halfway point, and in R4 Handley regained the lead by a single stroke going into Championship Sunday. And what a whirlwind round it was! The lead changed hands all round between Salonen, Handley and the pleasant "surprise" of Kat Mertsch.
At one point it looked like we were going to see an American champion, but we all know that when Eveliina smiles - and her putts want to go in - she is unstoppable!
She looked focused but happy and relaxed (kudos to James Proctor for his incredible work caddying for her all season) and the miracle happened: from hole 13 to 17 she gained 6 strokes on Mertsch and 11 on Handley to tap-in on 18 to the roar of the crowd to become the World Champion!
The embrace of her great friend @henna.blomroos represents what European - and worldwide - fans felt at that moment: Congratulations Eveliina!
#goeurope
