Malta wins silver medal at Euro Team Shield Championships

Team Malta won the silver medal at the European Men’s Team Shield Championships that were held in Lithuania

On Saturday, the Maltese golfers were up against hosts Lithuania for the gold medal and it was the latter who prevailed by two games to one.

It was a day that promised so much but, at the end, Lithuania prevailed leaving Team Malta disappointed but not remorseful of their achievements.

Andy Borg and Ruud Critien asserted themselves early in the foursomes match and never succumbed their lead to eventually win 5&4.

Bringing up the rear, JJ Micallef was having a totally diametrically opposite experience and indeed lost his singles match 5&4.

Sandwiched between these two matches, Laurens Schulze Doering was resisting the challenge of one of Lithuania’s finest players who took an early two hole lead.

The match started to turn slightly in favour to Laurens in the back nine with the match resting one down after 14.

Golf’s brutality, over the next two holes, retained the match in such a state instead of turning it in favour of Laurens.

 Laurens made par on the 17th hole but this was not sufficient to Lithuania’s birdie which closed the match.

In the other match for the medals, Bulgaria managed to clinch bronze from Ukraine.

Greece, Liechtenstein, Turkey, Cyprus, Latvia, Romania, Luxembourg and North Macedonia populated the rest of the table in that order.

This is the sixth successive medal for Malta in this tournament, the second silver with four other bronze medals. Malta did not win only in the first edition that was held in 2015.

Gold remains elusive.