Andrea Pavan is hoping to ride the wave of Italian success as he goes in search of his first professional title at the inaugural Acaya Open on home soil this week.
The 22 year old has been in fine form on the Challenge Tour this season – his rookie campaign – and has been inspired by the recent achievements of his countrymen, Edoardo and Francesco Molinari, who won the Omega Mission Hills World Cup for Italy in 2009, and Matteo Manassero, who has won twice on The European Tour in the last eight months.
Edoardo Molinari came through the Challenge Tour himself in 2009, winning the Rankings with record earnings, and Pavan is hoping to do the same. He has already shown he can mix it with the game’s top players by finishing 23rd in last month’s BMW Italian Open presented by CartaSi, and now he is targeting more success in his home country.
“I’m playing well and I was very happy with how it went at the Italian Open,” said Pavan, who just missed out on winning the Kärnten Golf Open presented by Mazda last month, despite taking a five shot lead into the final round.
“I’ve been putting well recently until last week when it started going in the other direction, so hopefully I can figure something out to get it going again before the tournament starts in Acaya.
“It’s always nice to play in your home country. I’ve been away the last few weeks now so it will be lovely to spend some time in Italy, and I think the weather will be very good. It’s pretty warm down there and maybe it will be quite breezy as it’s on the coast.
“It’s quite flat with fairly narrow tee shots, with not many trees. I will have to be accurate off the tee and, like I said, hopefully I can get my putter going well again.”
The Rome resident has been relying on invitations to Challenge Tour events, but has already racked up more than €24,000 from his eight appearances to sit 25th in the current Rankings.
He added: “It’s intense. I’ve been playing a lot recently but I really want to do well again in Acaya, and to win would be incredible.
“The Molinari brothers and Matteo Manassero are doing fantastically well on the Tour but there are many more great players in Italy. Those guys have reached an amazing level in the last two years and are a real inspiration to other Italians. I think they give us lots of motivation to follow in their footsteps and hopefully they will pull us with them.”
There has arguably never been a better time for Italian golf, and a number of other players, aside from Manassero and the Molinaris, are frequently in contention on the Challenge Tour – Alessandro Tadini, Federico Colombo and Andrea Perrino, to name but three.
The man who arguably brought Italian golf to the fore, Constantino Rocca, a five-time winner on The European Tour in the 1990s, is also in the field at Acaya Golf Resort, as is current Challenge Tour Rankings leader Ricardo Santos of Portugal.
Frenchman Anthony Snobeck, who won the last time the Challenge Tour visited Italy, at the Mugello Tuscany Open, will also contest the €160,000 prize fund over the 6,855-yard, par 72 course.
