Earlier this year, we named Team Discmania’s Oskari Vikström and teammate Niklas Anttila Finland’s disc golf future. Little did we know that Vikström wasn’t going to wait long for the future to become the present.
Vikström and Antilla each won a 2018 Finnish Junior Championship before joining forces to win the 2019 Finnish Doubles Championship earlier this year. Vikström wasn’t done though and has put himself amongst the best in Finland after winning the 2019 Finnish Nationals disc golf tournament.
The win is impressive on it’s own, but then you’re reminded that Vikström is just 16-years-old and you start to realize just how bright the future might be.
“This win feels amazing,” Vikström says. “I realized that it was possible for me pretty early on in the competition because the course suited me really well.”
Vikström was in the hunt early and shot the hot round in the second and third rounds to put him in a solid position going in to the final round.
Vikström says he was pretty focused on his game and kept it loose, “I really didn’t have that much of a strategy until the last round. Then, it was to shoot hot right out of the gates so I could just par the last holes.”
The comfortable finish is exactly what he did. With just two holes to go, he says it finally sunk in the the was going to win Finnish Nationals.
Last year you won the Junior Nationals, this year, you jumped up quite a bit. How has your game evolved in the last year?
Having won the Junior Nationals last year, Vikström says a few things have evolved for him, “I have trusted my backhands a lot more this season and my mental game has improved.”
If a 16-year-old can realize that his mental game is getting stronger and his overall technique is still improving, it won’t bel long before you see Vikström’s name at the top of disc golf leaderboards around the world.
The future isn’t years away. It’s here now.