This week’s Madeira Island Open Caixa Geral de Depositos is the first of four dual ranking tournaments between The European Tour and the European Challenge Tour in 2005, where the Challenge Tour players will have the chance to pit their skills against, among others, 19 European Tour champions in competition for a prize fund of €600,000 – the largest single purse in Challenge Tour history.
While the Masters Tournament at Augusta represents the opening Major Championship of the season, the Madeira Island Open Caixa Geral de Depositos is something of a ‘Major’ for the Challenge Tour Membership, given the size of the prize fund and the significance that securing victory at Santo da Serra carries.
Should this week’s winner emerge from the Challenge Tour ranks, he will receive automatic promotion to The European Tour for the remainder of the 2005 season and a one year exemption for 2006, while any Challenge Tour player finishing in the top five will make a significant surge up the Challenge Tour Rankings in the race for the top 15.
The current Challenge Tour players will come up against 13 of the 15 graduates from the 2004 Rankings at Santo da Serra, of whom England’s Graeme Storm has made the smoothest transition to The European Tour so far in 2005.
Storm, with €95,635 on The European Tour Order of Merit, is well on the way to safeguarding his place on Tour for next season.
Four of the 18 European Tour winners in the field have won the Madeira Island Open Caixa Geral de Depositos. The Spanish trio of Diego Borrero, Pedro Linhart and Santiago Luna – as well as former Ryder Cup Player Jarmo Sandelin of Sweden – have all tasted success at Santo da Serra since the tournament’s inception in 1993.
Sandelin, and another former Madeira Island Open Caixa Geral de Depositos winner, Niclas Fasth of Sweden (the 2000 champion), are both shining examples to the Challenge Tour players of what can be achieved after starting their careers on the Challenge Tour.
Both players won on the Challenge Tour before stepping up to The European Tour and then taking their careers even further by securing places in the European Ryder Cup Team.
Fasth won four times on the Challenge Tour before winning in Madeira and going onto play his part in the victorious Ryder Cup Team that triumphed at The De Vere Belfry in 2002; while Sandelin twice won on the Challenge Tour and went onto take five European Tour titles between 1995 and 2002, as well as playing in The 1999 Ryder Cup.
