After picking up his second win in three starts at the Made in Denmark Challenge – Presented by FREJA, Calum Hill has top spot in the European Challenge Tour Rankings in his sights as he returns to Galgorm Castle Golf Club for the ISPS HANDA World Invitational Men | Women, Presented by Modest! Golf.
The Scot’s second win of the season sees him shoot to second on the season-long Rankings and his confidence will be sky-high as he returns to the venue where he picked up his first Challenge Tour title in 2018.
The only man above Hill in the Rankings is fellow two-time winner Antoine Rozner. The Frenchman raced to the Number One spot with back-to-back victories at the Challenge de España and the Prague Golf Challenge in May to all but confirm his promotion to the European Tour as one of the 15 graduates.
Rozner, 26, has come close to securing early graduation via the three-win rule on two occasions since his second victory, however he fell just short by coming fourth at the Italian Challenge Open Eneos Motor Oil and fifth at Made in Denmark Challenge – Presented by FREJA, a result which helped him consolidate top spot.
Veteran Richard Bland, who is competing in his first full Challenge Tour season since 2004, currently sits marginally behind Hill in third place on 87,606 points, while Matthew Jordan is fourth following an incredible breakout season.
The 23-year-old is yet to miss a Challenge Tour cut and picked up his maiden professional victory in Italy earlier this year before finishing alongside Rozner in tied fifth in Denmark last week.
Robin Roussel, Connor Syme and José-Filipe Lima, all winners this season, occupy fifth, sixth, seventh place on the Rankings, while non-winners but consistent performers Cormac Sharvin, Grégory Havret and Joel Sjöholm fill the next three spots.
Rookie Lorenzo Scalise, who lost to Jordan in a play-off in Italy, is 13th on the Rankings, while countryman Francesco Laporta, who also lost in a play-off to Syme in Turkey, is 14th, while Le Vaudreuil Golf Challenge winner Steven Tiley rounds off the top 15.
With 11 tournaments left on the season-long Rankings, the race is hotting up for a life-changing top 15 spot, and the power is in the hands of the current inhabitants following a strong first half of the campaign.
