Thomas Pieters cannot wait to return to the Belgian Knockout as a world champion later this month - and he is looking forward to teeing it up on home soil for many years to come.
The European Tour returned to Belgium for the first time since 2000 last season for the innovative event, as Pieters and his family hosted a wonderful four days at Rinkven International Golf Club.
Rinkven and the Pieters clan will play host again as the full field plays two days of stroke play before a cut to 64 players, with separate play-offs to get each half of the draw down to 32 if necessary.
The remaining players will be seeded based on their performance on Thursday and Friday and then face off over nine holes of stroke play knockout, with the player with the lowest score after nine holes advancing.
The first three rounds of knockout action will cut the field from 64 to eight on Saturday, with the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final taking place on Sunday to decide who will join Adrian Otaegui as a Belgian Knockout champion.
Pieters was eliminated in the first knockout round in 2018 and is looking forward to trying to improve on that second time around.
"It's cool to know 95 per cent of the crowd personally," he said. "It's a cool feeling and I look forward to many more years of that."
Pieters recovered from his home disappointment in spectacular style, making 13 further weekend appearances on the Race to Dubai in 2018, with three top tens and just four finishes outside of the top 35.
He then arrived at the 2018 ISPS HANDA Melbourne World Cup of Golf full of confidence, and he and Thomas Detry lifted the trophy after finishing three shots clear of the field.
Detry also exited his home event in the last 64 but 2018 was his breakout year, with six top tens helping him to finish 31st on the Race to Dubai Rankings Presented by Rolex.
With that sort of consistency, many feel a maiden European Tour win will not be far away for the 26-year-old, and it would be a dream to claim his first win at Rinkven International.
"I think it was spectacular," he said of the 2018 event. "The course was really fun. Whenever you made a birdie there was a lot of people. It was pretty special."
Nicolas Colsaerts is the most senior of the leading Belgian trio and he flew the home flag for the longest in 2018, making the quarter-finals.
The 36-year-old has been brilliantly consistent since, making ten cuts from his first ten events on the 2019 Race to Dubai, and he is relishing the atmosphere awaiting in Antwerp.
"The tree-lined venue made it packed," he said. "You could play a few holes where it was lined up on each side and people surrounding the greens, it was actually quite cool to feel that buzz and having the chance to do that at home is something."
