Simon Wakefield (Getty Images)
For the first time since its inception in 1987, 40 players who competed on last season’s Challenge Tour gained promotion to The European Tour.
In addition to the graduates who earned promotion to The European Tour via their place in the top 20 of the final 2010 Challenge Tour Rankings, a further 19 players earned elevation to the top tier through last week’s Qualifying School – Final Stage.
The 40th and final former Challenge Tour Member competing in The 2011 Race to Dubai is Austrian Martin Wiegele, who earned instant promotion to The European Tour after winning the dual ranking SAINT-OMER OPEN presented by Neuflize OBC in June. That beats the previous best figure of 36, achieved in 2004.
Remarkably, of the players who took the top ten cards at the 2010 Qualifying School – Final Stage, no fewer than eight – including winner Simon Wakefield of England – were full Challenge Tour Members in 2010.
Furthermore, Frenchman Romain Wattel, who took the ninth card, won as an amateur on the Challenge Tour last season at the ALLIANZ Europen Strasbourg-Golf de la Wantzenau, leaving just South African Jaco Van Zyl as the sole representative of the top ten who did not compete on the 2010 Challenge Tour.
Like Wattel, Denmark’s Andreas Hartø – who took the eighth card – also triumphed as an amateur on the Challenge Tour last season, and he will now be joined on The 2011 European Tour International Schedule by his fellow former Challenge Tour Members Wakefield (who finished first), Spaniard Carlos Del Moral (second), Finland’s Mikko Korhonen (third), England’s Adam Gee (fourth), Germany’s Florian Fritsch (sixth), and the Welsh duo of Liam Bond (seventh) and Stuart Manley (tenth).
Further down the list another 12 former Challenge Tour Members also finished in the top 34 places, including Frenchman Alexandre Kaleka, who took the 22nd card to improve the category he had already secured by finishing in 20th place in the final Challenge Tour Rankings.
Of the Challenge Tour Members who entered the Qualifying School, a total of 26.6% secured their cards. That statistic compares favourably with the overall success rate of all players entering the Qualifying School, which was 21.7%, and that percentage drops even further, to 17.1%, for those successful entrants who did not compete on the Challenge Tour last season.
Alain de Soultrait, Director of the Challenge Tour, said: “We have worked hard to gain our reputation as the most successful finishing school for players wishing to graduate to The European Tour, and we now have the statistics to back up this claim. It gives me great pleasure to see 40 players from last season’s Challenge Tour making the step up to The European Tour, where I’m sure the invaluable experience they gained of playing in highly competitive events on our Tour will stand them in good stead.
“Even if our Members do not finish in the top 20 of the Rankings, they still have another opportunity of earning promotion to The European Tour through the Qualifying School, and it is extremely encouraging to see so many of them grasping this second chance. We look forward to building on our success in the coming years, when we firmly believe the Challenge Tour will continue to flourish and keep providing the golfing stars of the future.”
