Field in Focus: at the Apulia San Domenico Grand Final

Field in Focus: at the Apulia San Domenico Grand Final

europeantour.com takes a closer look at the field taking to San Domenico Golf for the Apulia San Domenico Grand Final from November 2-5.

In the field are:

12 players still in contention to be Challenge Tour Number One for 2011

Twelve players are still in the hunt to be crowned the Challenge Tour’s Number One graduate at San Domenico Golf, from three-time winner and current custodian of the top spot, the in-form Sam Little, down to the man ranked 12th in the 2011 standings, Scotland’s Craig Lee.

While Lee, who presently sits €53,449 behind Little, undoubtedly retains only a slim chance of topping the final rankings, a sizeable winner’s cheque of €56,650 means that literally anyone within the current top 12 can walk away from Italy as the Challenge Tour champion for 2011.

Tommy Fleetwood, who claimed €64,000 in capturing the lucrative Kazakhstan Open title in September, is perhaps in with the best chance of overhauling Little, with only €12,208 separating the current Challenge Tour Number Two from first place glory.

45 players still with a shot at a European Tour card for 2012

Every single Challenge Tour Member on show at San Domenico for the Grand Final can still finish in the top 20 of the 2011 rankings, and with it secure a much-coveted European Tour card for the following season.

Even 45th-placed Lloyd Kennedy who, at €20,632 behind the current Challenge Tour Number 20, South African Branden Grace, will still preserve a faint glimmer of hope of sneaking into the top 20, but would need a second place finish in Italy and for other results to go his way to do so.

Competition for the final 20 places, though, is still wide open with just over €10,000 separating 20-30th place in the current standings.

3 multiple Challenge Tour winners from 2011

Sam Little is very much the man of the moment on the Challenge Tour circuit after winning three out of the last five events since mid-September: the M2M Russian Challenge Cup, the ALLIANZ Golf Open Grand Toulouse and the Roma Golf Open, and the Englishman will be hoping to secure his fourth scalp of the season at the Grand Final, and his second on Italian soil, thus sealing his Number One berth at the top of the Challenge Tour rankings.

It was back in August that Benjamin Hebert secured his European Tour card with victory at the Rolex Trophy in Switzerland, after already placing first in back-to-back weeks at the Credit Suisse Challenge and the English Challenge in July, but the Frenchman is back in the Challenge Tour ranks for the season-ending climax and will also be gunning for his fourth title of the year and an eye on improving his current ranking position of fifth.

The third multiple winner of 2011 in the field at San Domenico is another Frenchman, Edouard Dubois, who won twice back in June at the Kärnten Golf Open presented by Mazda and the Scottish Hydro Challenge a few weeks later.

10 players in the field that finished inside top 45 in 2010

Of the 45 in the field, there are ten who played in the Grand Final last year, of which eight currently rank better than they did come the end of 2010.

11 players with 5 or more top-ten finishes on the 2011 Challenge Tour

Portugal’s Ricardo Santos has debatably had the most consistent season of any player on the Challenge Tour, having won once in June at The Princess by Schüco in Sweden, and with seven other top-ten finishes under his belt his reward is the current Number Three spot in the rankings, albeit sitting €17,517 behind second-placed Fleetwood – whose one win happened to come at the profitable Kazakhstan Open.

Italian Federico Colombo has never won on the Challenge Tour but despite this he is currently ninth in the 2011 rankings, a testament to his consistency throughout the season having also finished in the top ten on eight out of the 19 tournaments he has entered this year.

14 different nationalities represented 

5 Rookies playing in the Grand Final

Some five rookies have taken to life on the Challenge Tour particularly well, not only making it into the top 45 and the end of season Grand Final, but all in contention for a 2012 European Tour berth to boot. The stand out performance of this group has come from Italy's Andrea Pavan who is certain of graduating whatever happens at San Domenico, thanks mainly to his first Challenge Tour victory at the Norwegian Challenge which has him handily placed at seventh on the Ranking.

Also in the group are Englishmen Matthew Southgate (21st) and Chris Lloyd (29th) as well as Norwegians Knut Borsheim (28th) and Espen Kofstad (31st).

21 players with 38 Challenge Tour victories between them

Almost half of the field travelling to Italy for the Grand Final have previous experience of lifting a winner’s trophy on the Challenge Tour, experience that could prove crucial in seeing them over the line at San Domenico.

Current Number One, Little, tops the list with five Challenge Tour victories, followed by three men each with a treble of “Ws”: Benjamin Hebert, Alessandro Tadini and José-Filipe Lima.

24 players who have previously held full membership on the European Tour

Of these 24 there are plenty of stand out performances from people like Peter Gustafsson who narrowly lost in a play-off to fellow Swede Peter Hanson at the 2005 Jazztel Open de España en Andalucía, before following that up by finishing alone in second at the Omega European Masters that year on his way to finishing 42nd on the Order of Merit.

Or Phillip Archer who looked certain to secure his first European Tour victory in 2007, finishing second twice and ending the season 29th on the Order of Merit. In 2006 he also had a putt for a round of 59, and what would have been the lowest score in European Tour history, in the first round of The Celtic Manor Wales Open. However it narrowly slipped by and he would eventually go on to finish in a tie for fifth.

Other notables include Pelle Edberg who secured his card with two stunning performances in consecutive weeks in 2007, finishing in a tie for third and a tie for fourth at the Smufit Kappa European Open and The Barclays Scottish Open respectively en route to 51st on the Order of Merit that year.

Those like Sam Little and José-Filipe Lima have also spent multiple years on the European Tour with some success, and whichever players make the top 20 come the season's end will look to replicate, or even better, these successes in 2012.