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A stream of good-news items has been following on from the bad, with one of the most recent relating to the Challenge Tour in Europe. Challenge Tour players, who not long ago were ruing the loss of the Rolex Trophy event that had been scheduled from 19-22 August at Switzerland’s Golf Club de Genève, now are revelling in the news that Rolex and the R&A are helping to make what was looking like a seriously curtailed 2020 circuit get back on track.
Duncan Weir, the R&A’s executive director of golf development, explained how the R&A had added £300,000 to a regular annual donation of £120,000 to the Challenge Tour, and that the money had come from the COVID-19 Support Fund, a £7million package to help golf deal with the impact of the global pandemic.
“These are difficult times,” said Weir. “We wanted to help salvage this year’s schedule and, judging by the look of the two events European Tour personnel have just announced in Austria, we’ve hopefully done that.”
(The Austrian Open, the first of the events from 9-12 July, will mark the start of the Challenge Tour’s Road to Mallorca after a five-month gap, with the second, the Euram Bank Open, taking place the following week. Both involve dual ranking with the European Tour.)
Weir went on to say that the R&A see the Challenge Tour as a very important rung on the ladder of a golfer’s overall development: “We’ve been supporting it since 1988 and we will continue to support it. You only have to look at the list of past players to see how well it works.”
Needless to say, he cited such as Justin Rose and Martin Kaymer, two Challenge Tour graduates who have gone on to win majors. The pair have also joined that elite band of Rolex ambassadors.
Speaking for Rolex, Sandro Lorente, from the company’s communications department, said, “As you can imagine, we are pleased to confirm that Rolex continues its enduring relationship with the game in supporting the next generation of Challenge Tour players.” (This “enduring relationship” is not too different from the one offered by the company's time-pieces in that it has so far lasted 50 years.)
The 34-year-old old Jorge Campillo, who spent several years on the Challenge Tour but is now winning on the European Tour, where his most recent victory was in the 2020 Qatar Masters, said that he had not been surprised to learn that these organisations wanted to assist. “You really see who your friends are in these tough times and Rolex and the R&A are two of the best friends golf could have.”
Toby Tree, 26, who earned his European Tour card at the end of last year and has so far this season played in a mix of European and Challenge Tour events, said much the same. “A lot of people round the world have had worse things to deal with than we have but this has been a worrying time for sport and it’s great that we’re getting this help. I think we’re all looking forward to getting started in Austria.”
Ian Stoddard, the owner of Bounce Sports Management and a man who wasted no time in tweeting his congratulations to golf’s latest saviours, was keen to explain why the Challenge Tour means so much to his charges.
“Players never need more help than when they step away from the amateur game,” he said. “They will often have been a bit mollycoddled as amateurs and the Challenge Tour is where they get to know what’s involved in playing as professionals and to take responsibility for themselves.”
Stoddard, who has Bob McIntyre and Euan Walker on his books – the latter was the runner-up in the 2019 Amateur Championship – usually will arrange for potential clients to play in a couple of Challenge Tour events while they are still amateurs. Indeed, by way of a training exercise, he not so long ago dispatched four of them to play back-to-back Challenge Tour events in Turkey and Austria.
“In Turkey,” he recalls, “they were met at the airport and generally had everything done for them all week. They played in glorious weather and would have been thinking, ‘This is the life.’
“Then they moved on to Austria where they weren’t met at the airport. They had to hire a little Fiat and drive from the airport to a hotel in the middle of nowhere with the clubs sticking out of the sun roof. It poured with rain all week and I remember thinking, ‘That’s good.’ They were seeing both ends of the spectrum.”
Lewine Mair