Eveliina makes it three straight and Hammes wins another
July 16, 2025 by Kingsley Flett in Analysis, Recap
The Krokhol Disc Golf course, southeast of Oslo, Norway, has been the world’s #1 course over the past two years, according to UDisc. This past weekend, the strongest field to have ever gathered at Krokhol competed in the last tournament of the Norwegian swing, and it was Holyn Handley and Ben Callaway who came away with wins. Here’s some highlights from a dramatic three days in the Østmarka. We’re cutting it down to 7 this week so we can turn our attention to the majors!
1. To be Henceforth Known as ‘The Playoff’
First, there was three. At the end of regulation in MPO, Estonian Mauri Villmann, Czech Jakub Semerád, and Iowan Ben Callaway were tied at 22-under par. The tournament plan for the sudden death playoffs was to repeat hole 18 until we had a winner. This plan just had one flaw: hole 18 was the most birdied hole on the course at 59%. Villmann had birdied the hole two out of three times while Callaway and Semerád were 3/3.
All three players were yet to miss the fairway off the tee on 18. Villman saved that for the first playoff hole, though, when his OB drive took him out of contention. Callaway and Semerád then played the hole five more times in the long Scandinavian twilight. Both players landed in almost identical spots each time around, with Callaway having the longer upshots but Semerád leaving himself more work on the green each time. Eventually, an hour and ten minutes later, as the golf carts were getting ready to ferry the pair one more time up the hill, Semerád’s slightly high and right 25 foot putt didn’t catch enough chains and fell to the ground.
There was a stunned silence. Callaway looked like he was coming out of a trance before the emotion of his first win on the Disc Golf Pro Tour hit home. “I played hole 18 very well,” said Callaway after his win. “I don’t know if anybody saw but I think my shots were all within 20, 30 feet of each other and my longest putt was this last one here. I basically went blank in the head and let my disc golf take over.”
Semerád and Callaway embraced like two boxers who had gone 15 rounds, and then Jakub could only sit and watch Callaway celebrate: it’s the second year in a row the Czech has finished the tournament in second.
2. Callaway’s First Big Win
Callaway’s win was reward for a lot of grinding over a 15-year pro career. The way he was swamped in the rough and tumble of his traveling pro buddies embrace showed that it was a popular one.
“I feel elated, relieved, accomplished,” he said. “There’s a lot of emotions that are going through me right now but it’s hard to put them all into words. I have a wife and a daughter at home who are my biggest supporters. They are watching right now. I love you guys so much. Thank you for everything that you have been doing. Anyone who is a mother or a father and you have loved ones you know that if you spend any time away from them, it’s very difficult. I just want to say thank you to everyone at home who has been supporting me. This is for you.”
3. Holyn Wins on Her First Try in Europe
Holyn Handley has been quietly building a career-best year. She’s yet to finish outside the top five in 2025. After starting with a win in New Zealand in January, Handley has racked up eight podiums in DGPT events and four wins so far. In Krokhol, she stayed within a stroke of the lead all weekend before falling a couple of strokes behind Silva Saarinen early in the final round.
“I got a slow start there, but I stayed patient, and I stayed calm and just trusted that I could stay in the mix,” Handley said after her win. “I really feel like winning that mental battle is what did it. At the start, I know I was throwing a little bit off, and I felt like I got some unlucky breaks. But the luck always balances out, so I was like ‘we are not going to get upset and ruin the great putting that I’ve got going. We’ll just stay patient’ and it was fine. I was able to stay right with Silva the whole time.”
Handley and Saarinen had drawn level again by hole 11, then Handley went ahead with a birdie on 12. On 13, Holyn faced down the first of two clutch moments that made the winning difference. On a hole she had bogeyed the two previous rounds, Handley’s drive was clean but at circles edge, while Saarinen had parked the hole. Handley hit the death putt to stay one ahead when a miss would have most probably given the lead away.
“When Silva was parked, I was like ‘all right we’ve got to make this one’ and I just tried to stay nice and smooth and give it height,” Handley said.
Then, on hole 15, Handley thew OB but scrambled and was able to save par with an edge-of-circle make. “I was really happy to have put myself in position after going OB,” she said. “Then I was like ‘my putts been great all day, just trust it.’”
Two stroke swings on holes 14 and 16 allowed Handley the luxury of a three stroke buffer on the walk down the final fairway, where she was able to pitch up and tap in for the win. She now carries confidence and good form into the two back-to-back majors.
“If the putts are looking as good as they were this weekend and the shots are looking good – then just stay in the right head space and I’ve got a good chance,” Handley said.
4. Cadence Slashes the Course
Another player on their first European trip, who has also had an exceptional year so far, was Cadence Burge; with eight top 10 finishes, five podiums and a recent win in the Discmania Challenge in Iowa. Chainsaw continued this good form into the first round at Krokhol, birdying the last seven holes to equal the course record with a 7-under-par 59.
“My front nine was rougher,” Cadence said afterwards. “It seemed to me a lack of commitment. A lot of the shots needed to get a bit of turn on them and I just wasn’t turning them, so on the back nine I just focused on committing to all my shots, landing in the fairway and playing my game – and making putts.”
Burge went off the boil in round two, dropping six places with a +5 effort that included a triple bogey on 18. She channelled the frustration from that performance into the final round, though, taking two more strokes off the course record to shoot the hot round for the tournament and climb back up to second place. In all the ‘could-have-beens,’ that triple bogey to end round two was the difference between her finishing second and playing off for the win.
5. Building Towards a Crescendo in Finland
Maybe we have taken the Worlds a little for granted in recent years, but it seems that the main event just pops up on the calendar each year without much lead-up. It could be the novelty of the new location or the competition being more concentrated geographically, but the European tour so far seems to be all building nicely towards the World Championships in a few weeks. The European Disc Golf Festival in Estonia is shaping to be the perfect lead into the main event in Nokia.
6. More Matchplay
Another round of the DGPT Match Play Championship was held the day before the Krokhol Open got underway. In the FPO Group D match, Kristin Lätt beat Kona Montgomery 6 and 5; In FPO group A, Holyn Handley beat Ali Smith 8 and 7; and Ella Hansen beat Deann Carey 3 and 2. In MPO group B, Ezra Aderhold took out Paul McBeth 3 and 2 while in group C, Niklas Anttila won over James Proctor 5 and 3 and Adam Hammes took out Ezra Robinson 3 and 2. The match play started off with a bang when Ezra Robinson’s drive on the 133 meter (436 foot) hole one skipped on the front of the sloped green and crashed in for the weekend’s only ace.
7. Onwards to Tallinn
We now head into back-to-back majors, starting with the European Disc Golf Festival in Tallinn, Estonia, an event that has built a distinct aura in its short time on the tour. This European swing has already been memorable and its biggest events are yet to come.
