Just to win five times on the DP World Tour is impressive. To do so at the age of 30 is also remarkable, but to win at 30 after having endured an 11-year drought is unprecedented and outrageous.
Take a bow, Matteo Manassero, winner of last week’s Jonsson Workwear Open at Glendower Golf Club in Dowerglen, South Africa, near Johannesburg.
The Italian had claimed the halfway lead with a DP World Tour career-low 11-under-par 61 in the second round and maintained his advantage through the weekend with admirable calm. A thunderstorm halted the tournament as he was playing the 71st hole with a one-shot lead.
The 2½-hour delay would have been agony to anyone. Was it an advantage or disadvantage that this was merely an extension to the long-standing wait Manassero had endured to resume trophy acquisition at the highest level?
"Golf had become too heavy on me. That was a tough realisation. I had always played golf in a free and joyful way, but I knew I had to rebuild myself.”
Matteo Manassero
Recall the extent to which the Verona resident had been a prodigy.
In 2009, at age 16, he was the youngest winner of the British Amateur Championship. A month later, he tied for 13th in the Open Championship at Turnberry.
In 2010, just days before his 17th birthday, he became the then-youngest golfer to make the cut in the Masters. Later that year, after turning professional, he was the youngest winner on the then-European Tour, in the Castelló Masters.
Manassero won again in each of the next three seasons on the European Tour, each victory more significant than the last, culminating with the BMW PGA Championship in 2013.
Remember, too, the bleak times that followed.
After four straight years finishing 31st or better in the end-of-year rankings, he failed to break the top 50 in any of the next five. Manassero lost his card in 2018 and made just one cut in 18 starts in 2019.
In a blog published on the DP World Tour website last November, he wrote: “The toughest period was when I stepped away from golf in 2019 for a few months. I literally couldn’t play any more. Golf had become too heavy on me. That was a tough realisation. I had always played golf in a free and joyful way, but I knew I had to rebuild myself.”
He did just that, starting alone with a trusted team and then returning to competitive action on the third-tier Alps Tour where he claimed a victory in 2020 that was greeted with joy on social media, proof of how popular he remained with fans and his fellow professionals.
Two seasons on the second-tier Challenge Tour followed, but they were solid rather than spectacular. Only last summer, when he won in Denmark (two days after the 10th anniversary of his Wentworth triumph) and then Italy to confirm a return to Europe’s top table, did a genuine sense emerge that there was substance to this Italian renaissance.
On Sunday, with the prospect of an emotional win almost cruelly delayed by the inclement weather and literal rather than metaphorical darkness descending, perhaps he pondered how he had written in that blog: “It [a return to the DP World Tour] took time but I guess I had good resilience.”
Whatever thoughts went through his head in those moments in and around the clubhouse, when he returned to the course it was in style.
He already had made two eagles and a birdie at the par-5 17th hole during the week, and he now added a second birdie to open a two-stroke advantage over his closest pursuers.
He snuffed out any hopes they might have had with yet another par breaker, his fourth in a row, on 18 to complete a three-shot victory over South Africans Thriston Lawrence and Shaun Norris and England’s Jordan Smith on 26-under 262.
“This is the best day of my life on a golf course,” he said after taking ownership of the trophy. “It’s been a crazy journey over the last few years. I knew I was on the right track, but then you never know what might happen.
“Even coming down the 18th, with a good tee shot, I still had to do some work. Golf is a really difficult and tough game, so I am incredibly happy to be celebrating here now.
“I played really good golf today, and need to because the guys behind were playing some incredible golf and there was always somebody chasing me.”
His round might almost have been his career in microcosm when he added: “I had a difficult time at 12 and 13. It was hard, but I got through it. In every round of golf, you have times that if you can get through them, you can see light, and the finish was amazing.”
In the November blog, he had written: “Making progress doesn’t come from trying to recreate what I did 10 years ago. I think I will enjoy next season in some ways more than I did when I was on the DP World Tour years ago.”
If it was a hopeful notion, victory No. 5 will go a very long way toward fulfilling it.
Matt Cooper