There will be an obvious source of inspiration for the 156 hopefuls who will this week embark on the gruelling 108-hole marathon at The European Tour Qualifying School – Final Stage, all with their sights fixed on one of the prized 30 cards for next season. Step forward Simon Khan.
Last year at PGA Catalunya Resort, in Girona – also the venue for this week’s event – Khan emerged as ‘head boy’ from one of the toughest schools in sport. It was to be one of two career-changing moments over an unforgettable six month period for the 38 year old Englishman.
Having won the Final Stage by beating his young compatriot Sam Hutsby into second place, Khan subsequently enjoyed a stunning season on The European Tour, with the undoubted highlight his one shot victory at the Tour’s flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship.
His winner’s cheque for €750,000 was the catalyst for Khan ending the season in 25th position in The Race to Dubai, the joint best finish of his career and some 102 places higher than he managed 12 months ago.
Khan said: “At the start of the week of the BMW PGA Championship, my wife and I were reading an article in a magazine about my experience at the Qualifying School and I’d mentioned in the interview that your ball and clubs don’t know it’s the Qualifying School, so you’ve still got to commit yourself to every shot. Going back there was a real eye-opener, because it’s such a stressful week.
“But after I came through it I told myself that if you can do it there, you can do it anywhere, and I proved that at the BMW PGA Championship. My career, and my whole life, has turned around so much in the past year."
"So I’m very grateful for the Qualifying School, but hopefully I won’t be going back there any time soon!”
Amongst the players bidding to emulate Khan are the Scottish trio of Marc Warren, Alastair Forsyth and Andrew Coltart, who finished 124th, 127th and 143rd respectively in The Race to Dubai.
After topping the Challenge Tour Rankings in 2005, Warren won both the Scandinavian Masters and the Sir Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year award in 2006, before triumphing at the 2007 Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles and partnering Colin Montgomerie to Scottish glory at the Omega Mission Hills World Cup later that same year.
But since then he has struggled for consistency, as highlighted by the fact that his ninth place finish at this year’s Omega European Masters was his only top ten of the campaign.
Forsyth, also a two-time European Tour champion and winner of the Qualifying School – Final Stage in 1999, went without a top ten finish this season but he, like former Ryder Cup player Coltart, will take encouragement from the renaissance of their fellow Scot Stephen Gallagher.
Having recovered from a debilitating virus, Gallacher finished third behind Khan and Hutsby at last year’s Qualifying School – Final Stage, since when he has secured four top finishes on The European Tour – including fourth place at the BMW PGA Championship – en route to finishing 26th in The Race to Dubai.
Along with BMW Italian Open winner Fredrik Andersson Hed of Sweden, Spaniard Alejandro Cañizares and Khan, Gallacher was one of four 2009 Qualifying School graduates who competed at the season-ending Dubai World Championship presented by DP World, whilst a further three players – Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Gonnet, Scotland’s Steven O’Hara and Denmark’s Mark Haastrup – retained their European Tour cards for next season.
Indeed, Haastrup finished 117th in The Race to Dubai to take the final card at the expense of unlucky ‘loser’ Hutsby, the European Tour rookie who will be hoping for a repeat of his heroics 12 months ago over the stunning Tour and Stadium courses at PGA Catalunya Resort.
Some of the in-form players heading to Girona this week include the winners of the four Second Stages, played at various venues across southern Spain earlier this week: Sweden’s Martin Erlandsson and American Scott Harrington (joint winners at Hacienda del Alamo), Norwegian Eirik Tage Johansen (Costa Ballena Ocean Club), England’s Steve Lewton (Arcos Gardens) and Switzerland’s Raphaël de Sousa (El Valle Golf Resort).
After finishing in the unenviable position of 21st in the 2008 Challenge Tour Rankings, de Sousa’s confidence disintegrated in 2009, but the 27 year old showed serious signs of a return to form by finishing eight shots clear of the rest of the field at El Valle Golf Resort.
Another player who knows the pain of finishing 21st in the Challenge Tour Rankings – and therefore one place outside promotion to The European Tour – is Spaniard Carlos del Moral who, despite winning this year’s M2M Russian Challenge Cup, missed out on graduation by a mere €558.
But del Moral, making his fifth successive visit to the Final Stage, will be hoping to follow in the spike marks of Paraguay’s Marco Ruiz, who missed out on 20th place in the Challenge Tour Rankings by just €260 in 2008 but promptly banished his disappointment by taking the 22nd card at the Qualifying School, before repeating the feat at PGA Catalunya Resort last year, when he finished fourth.
Ruiz is thus acutely aware of the highs and lows of professional golf, and the Qualifying School – Final Stage is perhaps renowned more than any other event for serving up joy and despair in equal measure, as the 156 hopefuls chase the dream of a place in The 2011 Race to Dubai.
The gold rush starts this Saturday, and after four rounds – two each at the Stadium and Tour courses – the field will be cut to the top 70 and ties, who will play a further two rounds over the Stadium course to determine the final 30.
Co-designed by European Tour champions Neil Coles of England and Spain’s Angel Gallardo, the Stadium course opened in 1999 and hosted the Open de España in 2000 and 2009.
A European Golf Design course, it was voted the 88th best course in the world by US Golf Digest in 2010 and is notable for its tree-lined fairways, elevated tees and spectacular views of the Pyrenees mountain range.
