If 2009 was a bittersweet year for Spaniard Alvaro Velasco, as he married his long-term partner Marta but lost his playing privileges on The European Tour, then 2010 was unquestionably an annus mirabilis.
For not only did his native Spain lift the World Cup for the first time in their history, he also ended the 2010 Challenge Tour campaign clutching a European Tour card as the Number One graduate, putting the seal on the most satisfying season of his career to date.
His professional career, which started in 2005, has been marked by peaks and troughs, but the 29 year old hardly put a foot wrong in a season which saw him – like Edoardo Molinari, his predecessor as the winner of the Rankings – capture two titles, on home soil at the Fred Olsen Challenge de España in June and then at the lucrative Kazakhstan Open in September.
The Spaniard thus showed some serious signs of fulfilling the potential he first displayed in 2006 when, having developed his game first as an amateur at the University of South Carolina in the United States and then as a professional on the Spanish national Tour, he got his debut Challenge Tour campaign underway in noteworthy fashion, with three top ten finishes.
Velasco, who studied Marketing and Management, recalled: “My first tournament on the Challenge Tour was in Estoril in 2006, and I played really well to finish fourth, which meant I got into the next tournament, in Kenya, where I finished in the top ten.
“That gave me a lot of confidence, and also made it easier to get sponsors’ invitations. I finished the season 50th in the Rankings, which meant I had a good category for the next season and so didn’t need any sponsors’ invitations. Fortunately I made the most of it, as I ended up finishing inside the top 20 to make it onto The European Tour in 2008. It had always been a dream of mine to play on The European Tour since I first started playing golf, and now I had finally arrived.”
Up until that point the professional game had come easily to Velasco, who first picked up a club aged six when his whole family decided to take up golf, was down to scratch by the age of 16, and finished second in his first appearance as a professional on Spain’s domestic Tour.
But suddenly the softly-spoken Spaniard was now competing against seasoned campaigners and at first he struggled to find his feet in 2008, earning just over €15,000 from his first five events, with a tie for 28th place at the Alfred Dunhill Championship in South Africa his best effort.
At the Madeira Islands Open BPI – Portugal, however, his rhythm returned, and courtesy of matching rounds of 68 at the weekend, he secured the first of what he hoped would be many top ten finishes on The European Tour.
With confidence fully restored, Velasco repeated the feat in three of his next seven events to go some way towards retaining his card, which he confirmed with a top 15 finish on home turf at the CASTELLÓ MASTERS Costa Azahar in October.
If that was a peak, however, a trough was soon to follow, as he made another sluggish start in 2009. This time he failed to recover, however, and for the first time in his career he was forced to deal with a serious setback.
“Sometimes though, you learn more about yourself and your game from playing badly than you do from playing well,” he acknowledged with admirable wisdom and his customary humility. “My feet were still on the ground and I knew I would have to play very well on the Challenge Tour, because the level of competition is very high. My main goal was just to finish in the top ten and get my card back, but I never believed I would win the Rankings.”
That he managed to do so was due largely to those two victories, secured in the contrasting countries – and conditions – of the Canary Islands and Kazakhstan.
He said: “It was a fantastic week in La Gomera – I’d played well at times in the weeks running up to the tournament, just hadn’t managed to put four good rounds together. But that week I kept it going for all four days, so it was special to win my first event on the Challenge Tour, and made even more special by the fact that it was in my home country. A lot of the Spanish players stayed together that week so there was a really good atmosphere.”
Another night of celebration would follow a fortnight later, as Velasco – whose beloved Barcelona supplied over half of the starting XI – watched Vicente Del Bosque’s Spanish side overcome their Dutch counterparts in South Africa to win the World Cup.
Velasco, a consummate professional whose affable nature hides a steely determination, soon returned to the day job and, after finishing in a tie for second place behind French amateur sensation Romain Wattel at the ALLIANZ EurOpen Strasbourg–Golf de la Wantzenau, went one better in Almaty a week later.
“It was great to get my first win in Spain but my win in Kazakhstan was probably more important because it meant I had my card back,” he said. “I practiced really well leading up to the tournament so my game felt good, and the week couldn’t have gone any better. It meant I could relax and enjoy the rest of the season, because the only pressure was whether I was going to finish top of the Rankings, which is a very nice position to be in.”
Had Austrian Bernd Wiesberger, winner of the ALLIANZ Golf Open de Lyon and the ALLIANZ Golf Open du Grand Toulouse, been able to maintain his early momentum on the final day of the season-ending Apulia San Domenico Grand Final, Velasco might have been denied at the death.
But as the Austrian’s challenge faded down the stretch and victory went instead to England’s Matt Haines, Velasco was able to savour the finest achievement of his career.
The Spaniard can now look forward to renewing acquaintances with his compatriots on The European Tour in 2011 and beyond, when his mission is to follow Molinari not only into the winners’ enclosure, but also the top 50 of the Official World Golf Ranking.
He said: “I know the other Spanish guys on the Tour very well – people like Alvaro Quiros, Gonzalo Fernandez-Castaño, Pablo Martin, Alejandro Cañizares and Pablo Larrazabal. We normally all go out together whenever we’re on Tour, and we always try to stay in the same hotels. We have a lot of fun, especially with Alvaro – whenever we go out for dinner, nobody else can get a word in because he’s always talking so much!
“He’s a great guy, and also a great player. Hopefully I can reach the same levels as him but my aim now is to win on The European Tour. Obviously I’ve still got a long way to go, but Edoardo has shown what is possible. European golf is strong at the moment and I want to be a part of it.”
Velasco will be joined in The 2011 Race to Dubai by ten of the 20 winners from the 2010 Challenge Tour Schedule, namely: Matt Haines, who graduated in second place in the Rankings; Denmark’s Thorbjørn Olesen, who won The Princess en route to finishing third; his fellow rookie Floris de Vries of the Netherlands, who took fourth thanks largely to his victory at the Mugello-Tuscany Open; two-time winner Bernd Wiesberger, who finished fifth; and Sweden’s Oscar Floren, winner of the SWALEC Wales Challenge and the sixth graduate.
Also making the step up are Australian Daniel Gaunt, who owed his seventh place finish largely to his victory at the English Challenge; England’s Robert Dinwiddie, who finished one place below thanks in part to his victory early on in the season at the Kenya Open; Chile’s Mark Tullo, who saw off Matteo Manassero at the Rolex Trophy and Rory McIlroy at the Egyptian Open 2010 presented by SODIC en route to finishing ninth; Scotland’s George Murray, the tenth graduate who captured his maiden title on home soil at the Scottish Hydro Challenge; and England’s Lee Slattery, who returns to The European Tour as the 13th graduate after winning the Telenet Trophy.
A further nine players – Argentina’s Julio Zapata (who finished 11th in the Rankings), the Swedish duo of Joel Sjöholm (12th) and Magnus A Carlsson (18th), the Scottish pair of Scott Jamieson (14th) and Raymond Russell (19th), Australian Matthew Zions (15th), Norwegian Marius Thorp (16th), Italian Lorenzo Gagli (17th) and Frenchman Alexandre Kaleka (20th) – owe their places on The 2011 European Tour International Schedule to the admirable consistency they displayed throughout the season.
Finally, in a season where standards continued to rise on the European Challenge Tour, nowhere was that more evident than in the fact that eight players – Christopher Ryan Baker, Carlos Del Moral, Charlie Ford, Andreas Harto, Alessandro Tadini, David Vanegas, Sam Walker and Romain Wattel – all won during the course of the year but could not force their way into the top 20 come the final curtain call.
Particularly unfortunate was Velasco’s compatriot Del Moral whose victory in the M2M Russian Challenge Cup 2010, allied to four other top 20 finishes saw him finish in 21st place in the Rankings, a mere €558 behind 20th placed Alexandre Kaleka. It can be a cruel game at times but Del Moral, just like Velasco before him, will be back to try again next season.
Paul Symes
The European Tour
Reproduced from The 2011 European Tour Yearbook and you can order your copy here
