Having coming agonisingly close to victory on one of his three appearances on the Challenge Tour this season, Martin Rominger enters this week’s Credit Suisse Challenge as one of the favourites to provide the crowds with a home win.
Rominger, a former Swiss Amateur Champion, lives just 20 minutes from the venue this week at Golf Sempachersee and feels confident of claiming his maiden Challenge Tour win, especially given his performance at the Fred Olsen Challenge de España less than two months ago.
The 33 year old led the field after the opening round in La Gomera, on Spain’s Canary Islands, and entered the final round just one shot off the lead before taking to the top of the leaderboard midway through the final day.
A poor back nine, however, stifled his chances and Eduardo De La Riva emerged victorious, but Rominger still takes plenty of positives from that week and is hoping to take them into this week.
“My finish was a bit disappointing in La Gomera,” he said. “I was leading with nine holes to go and unfortunately I made a few bogeys coming in, hit it in the water a couple of times and three-putted twice so I could have done a bit better than ninth place. But it showed me that if I play well I can be up there challenging.
“I know Golf Sempachersee quite well. I've played a few times here before and I prepared well for this year so I've played it quite a bit.
“It is a bit of a comfort zone here, definitely. My little girl is only two so it’s probably a bit too soon for her to be coming out to watch me this week but I have a friend caddying and I will probably have people coming to watch me so the support should be there.
“I feel good here and I've played nicely practicing. I've played the course probably more than anybody here this week so I need to take advantage of that and hopefully get top ten and get into next week’s Challenge Tour tournament.”
Rominger is one of the many Swiss players who will be hoping for home glory this week and he believes that this tournament has done wonders for golf in a country which has seen the game grow rapidly in recent years.
“Since The Credit Suisse Challenge began this course has improved a lot,” he said. “It’s looking good, better than previous years I think. The greens are going to be good and the rough’s up so it’s going to be a good challenge.
“Golf is growing in Switzerland. There are more people getting involved. We have almost 100,000 active players now which is quite big for such a small country.
“This is the second biggest we have in Switzerland besides the event in Crans on The European Tour so the interest is good, the press is interested and we have local radio stations and some TV stations coming so it’s going to be a good event.
“Hopefully some juniors will come watch too, hopefully we can have some Swiss success too and I’m ready for it.”
