With only four events remaining before the Road to Mallorca reaches its final stop at the season-ending Challenge Tour Grand Final, we have delved into some of the key headlines following Lars van Meijel’s maiden victory at the Hopps Open de Provence.
With only four events remaining before the Road to Mallorca reaches its final stop at the season-ending Challenge Tour Grand Final, we have delved into some of the key headlines following Lars van Meijel’s maiden victory at the Hopps Open de Provence.
Game on
The battle for the top spot looks set to go all the way to the wire with Antoine Rozner moving above Richard Bland and back into second position on the Rankings following his top ten finish at Golf International de Pont Royal last week.
With Road to Mallorca Rankings leader Calum Hill accepting an invite to the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on the European Tour, the Frenchman now sits just 3,489 points off the top spot, with Bland perched threateningly, just 568 points behind.
While the Challenge Tour Number One looks increasingly likely to come from the leading three players, who hold a sizable advantage over Ricardo Santos in fourth position, the race to secure one of the all-important 15 European Tour cards for next season remains wide-open.
Among those eyeing the coveted promotion spots is last week’s victor van Meijel, who moved up 23 places into 14th position following his maiden European Challenge Tour victory.
It was a similar story for Sebastian Heisele, who has rocketed up the Rankings in recent weeks. The German secured his maiden win at the Open de Bretagne in early September before narrowly missing out on his second victory on French soil in less than a month at the Hopps Open de Provence, where he eventually finished in second place. With his timely return to form, the 31-year-old jumped into the final promotion spot as he eyes an immediate return to the European Tour.
Pressure players
With the pressure starting to build as the season heads towards its conclusion, it was a good week for those near the top, with seven of the top 15 players on the Road to Mallorca Rankings recording top ten finishes in France. Spain’s Sebastian Garcia Rodriguez extended his remarkable run, with back-to-back top three finishes moving him into tenth, while Italy’s Francesco Laporta continues his rise up the Rankings, climbing to ninth. Robin Roussel took a further step towards clinching promotion with a top five finish on home soil last week, moving up two spots into eighth.
Meanwhile, with the top 53 players on the Rankings following this week’s Lalla Aïcha Challenge Tour securing a spot in the field for next month’s Foshan Open in China, it’s all-or-nothing for those in the middle of the order.
Aaron Cockerill kept his European Tour dreams alive with his best finish of the season last week, a tie for fifth, which moves the Canadian up 29 spots into 60th position. Meanwhile, England’s Garrick Porteous, who currently occupies 53rd position, knows there will be plenty of strong players on his tail this week as the Challenge Tour heads to Morocco for the first time in almost a decade.
