As the Challenge Tour takes a two-week mid-season break, with 15 events down and ten to go, it is a perfect time to reflect on the action from the first part of the campaign…
Portugal’s Ricardo Santos is the man to catch as the Challenge Tour heads towards the final third of the season, having built up a sizeable lead in the Rankings with his impressive consistency so far.
The 28 year old has had seven top ten finishes from the 13 events he has played to rack up €81,436 and lead by nearly €13,000 from Frenchman Edouard Dubois.
One of those top tens was a wonderful maiden victory in The Princess by Schüco in Sweden, where weekend rounds of 65 and 66 in tricky weather conditions gave Santos a three-shot win from Englishman Daniel Brooks and the €32,000 winner’s cheque.
Although currently in pole position, Santos will be wary of the threats of in-form Jamie Moul and Benjamin Hebert, who are currently third and fifth respectively, as well as second placed Dubois.
Hebert completed a stunning double last weekend at the English Challenge, where he won for the second time in eight days following his victory in the Credit Suisse Challenge. The feats were all the more remarkable given that he had missed six consecutive cuts leading up to the back-to-back triumphs, but now he has accrued €57,780 and has a fantastic chance to return to The European Tour.
Moul is also in a purple patch having finished first, second and fifth in his last three tournaments. The 26 year old from Essex made a promising start to the season with third place at the Gujarat Kensville Challenge and eighth at the ALLIANZ Open Cotes d'Armor - Bretagne, but sparked into life at the Acaya Open in Italy, where he won by a shot.
The next week he finished second, four shots behind Hebert in Switzerland, and then came up just short in his bid to win the English Challenge at Stoke By Nayland, the club where he has been a member since childhood.
Although he narrowly failed to give the crowds the home winner they craved, Moul jumped into third place in the Rankings with €67,000, just behind second-placed Dubois, who has amassed €68,536 courtesy of two victories.
The young Frenchman triumphed at the Kärnten Golf Open presented by Mazda with two brilliant rounds at the weekend to snatch victory from Italian Andrea Pavan, who had led by five shots heading into the final day. A fortnight later he tasted victory again, this time claiming the title at the lucrative Scottish Hydro Challenge with four impressive rounds in the sixties.
Whereas Santos’ campaign has been brilliantly consistent – he has missed just two cuts all year – Dubois has endured more of a rollercoaster season, with his victories sandwiched in between some rather more ordinary performances where he missed the cut by some distance.
Italian Federico Colombo, like Santos, has been the model of consistency, not missing a cut on the Challenge Tour since the season-opening Abierta International Copa Antioquia in Colombia in March to rise to fourth in the Rankings with €63,425.
Fine performances in the more lucrative events on the Challenge Tour Schedule have laid the foundations for his current position. He was 17th in the dual-ranking SAINT-OMER OPEN presented by Neuflize OBC, fourth in the Madeira Islands Open, which earned him more than €21,000, and fifth in the Scottish Hydro Challenge.
The top 20 players in the Rankings come the end of the season earn ‘promotion’ to The European Tour, and there is plenty of time – and money to be earned – for players further down the Rankings at the moment to make their move.
This time last year Mark Tullo was in 36th place, but wins in the Rolex Trophy at the end of August and the Egyptian Open presented by SODIC in October – the penultimate event of the season – propelled him up to ninth.
Of course, it can work in the opposite direction too, as Charlie Ford knows only too well. At this stage last season he was seventh in the Rankings following victory in the Turkish Airlines Challenge hosted by Carya Golf Club, but between early July and the end of the season he did not have a single top ten finish, meaning he slipped back to ultimately finish 22nd.
Of the ten events remaining, three in particular will have a big impact on the final Rankings because of the large prize funds on offer. First is the Kazakhstan Open, which boasts a prize fund of €400,000, and the following week is the €250,000 M2M Russian Challenge Cup. The final event of the season is the Apulia San Domenico Grand Final, with a purse of €330,000.
Scott Jamieson was languishing in 71st place before last year’s Kazakhstan Open, but a tied second finish their launched him into the top 20 and he finished the season as the 14th graduate after top-20 performances in the Russian Challenge and the season-ending Grand Final in Italy. The Scot has taken full advantage of his opportunity by having a remarkable rookie season on The European Tour, with five top tens so far.
The Kazakhstan Open was also where Alvaro Velasco cemented his position as the 2010 Challenge Tour champion. The Spaniard was sixth before that event but the €64,000 first prize for his five-shot victory meant he streaked out in front of the chasing pack, and he remained there until the end of the season.
Santos may have put himself in pole position to win the Rankings, but whether he can stay there after the final ten tournaments of 2011, and who will join him in graduating to The European Tour, are mouth-watering prospects.
