While it may fall short of the millions on offer at the Majors and WGC events on The European Tour, the €400,000 prize fund is a veritable goldmine for the players teeing up at next week’s Kazakhstan Open.
With €64,000 available to the champion – almost twice as much as any other regular event on the Challenge Tour Schedule – it is no coincidence that the winner of the Kazakhstan Open for the past two years has also gone on to top the Rankings at the end of the season.
Edoardo Molinari would still have ended the 2009 season as the Challenge Tour Number One had he not collected the second of three Challenge Tour titles at the Kazakhstan Open, but his win enabled the all-conquering Italian to finish the campaign with €242,979, which seems destined to remain a Rankings record for some time.
Molinari opened with successive rounds of 67, but unquestionably the more impressive effort was on the second day, when torrential rain in Almaty put a premium on birdies and led to a lengthy suspension in play.
If that battling performance was noteworthy, Molinari’s performance in the final two rounds was nothing shy of imperious, as he played the weekend without dropping a single stroke for the first time in his career to prevail by three strokes from England’s Chris Gane.
Molinari’s 20 under par aggregate winning total was comfortably the lowest in the tournament’s history, but incredibly Alvaro Velasco went one better when taking the title last year.
Like his illustrious predecessor as champion, the Spaniard opened with a round of 67 before signing for three more sub-70 rounds to finish on 21 under par, a full five strokes clear of a trio of rivals which included Scotland’s Scott Jamieson.
Velasco’s €64,000 winner’s cheque propelled him to the top of the Challenge Tour Rankings and he would never relinquish his position at the head of affairs, eventually finishing the season with impressive earnings of €134,297.
Portugal’s Ricardo Santos goes into next week’s €400,000 event as the current Rankings leader, but victory for anyone in the top 100 could conceivably see them succeed Velasco as the Number One graduate.
News
