Golf: Mamma mia! Swedes do an Abba on world golf

Run an eye down the leaderboard on the opening day of the New Zealand Open and one word keeps cropping up: Sweden.

The 156-strong field at Gulf Harbour includes a staggering 18 Swedish players.

The pick of the bunch on a sweltering opening day yesterday were former Ryder Cup players Niclas Fasth, Chris Hanell and Joakim Haeggman, who all shot sizzling 7-under rounds of 65 to sit just off the pacesetter, Australian Steven Bowditch at 8-under.

Another top performer, Pierre Fulke, is at 6-under and one of 14 who shot below par yesterday.

Think Sweden and sports and, apart from the Bjorn Borg-inspired tennis generation, snow and ice spring to mind.

But Sweden provided seven players in the top 85 on the European Tour last year, and there are four in the world top 100 this week.

In world No 77 Jesper Parnevik they have a player who has prospered on the gruelling US PGA Tour.

It's not quite domination of a global sport on the scale of Spain's charge to the top of world tennis.

But it makes impressive reading for all that.

A case can be made that the start of Sweden's rise to a prominent position in the game was the Eisenhower Trophy on Christchurch's Shirley course in 1990.

There, a Swedish team comprising Mattias Gronberg, Gabriel Hjertstedt, Klas Eriksson and Per Nyman romped to a 13-stroke victory.

It was Sweden's first, and so far only, victory in the world amateur championship and they beat New Zealanders Steve Alker, Grant Moorhead, Michael Long and Brent Paterson by 13 shots.

Sweden were runners-up to the United States in 1996, and that team included Hanell and Leif Westerberg, another of those in red numbers at Gulf Harbour yesterday.

Of the Swedes at the Open, Fasth played Ryder Cup in 2002, as did Fulke, Haeggman, who was in the 1993 team, and Jarno Sandelin played in 1999.

Fasth, 32, was a happy camper after his morning round yesterday.

He'd played well in the pro-am, likes the feel of the course and it showed. He had four birdies in a 32 on the first nine and his solitary bogey came at the 8th, his 17th hole.

"It doesn't get better. It was a really nice morning, not too much wind, the course was good, you can't complain about anything," he said.

Many of his compatriots would share his viewpoint on a good day to be Swedish.