A DP World Tour event with greater significance than many takes place at the venue for this year’s Ryder Cup, Marco Simone Golf and Country Club.
The biennial tournament is less than five months away, and many players have the opportunity to continue accumulating Ryder Cup points in their effort to qualify automatically.
One of those is the defending champion, Robert MacIntrye. The Scot stunned Matt Fitzpatrick last year with a brilliant final round of 64 to force a playoff, which he eventually won with a birdie on the first extra hole. MacIntyre has been in excellent recent form, too, with top 10 finishes in each of his last three outings, including a tie for seventh in last week’s Korea Championship.
Team Europe captain Luke Donald is also in this week’s field, and, with six captain’s picks available to the 45-year-old, MacIntyre will be aiming to stay firmly in his thinking by producing another solid performance and demonstrating his command of the course. As well as Donald, his Vice Captains Thomas Bjorn, Nicolas Colsaerts and home favourite Edoardo Molinari also play.
Other players who will have September’s tournament in mind include German Yannik Paul, Frenchman Victor Perez and Spaniard Jorge Campillo, who are all relatively well set in the European Ryder Cup Points List as they aim to keep themselves in contention for automatic qualification.
Paul had successive runner-up finishes in the Thailand Classic and Hero Indian Open, and followed those performances up with a tie for sixth in the ISPS Handa Championship in Japan, and he’ll be looking for another impressive display this week.
As for Perez, he finished third in this tournament last year and won January’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship. Meanwhile, Campillo has achieved four top-10 finishes in a row, including a win in the Magical Kenya Open in March, so each player will be confident of further success this week.
As well as MacIntrye, another former winner of the event is Nicolai Hojgaard, who claimed victory by one shot in 2021, and he also appears after finishing tied for 33rd in last week’s Mexico Open on the PGA Tour. One of the players Hojgaard edged out that year was Pole Adrian Meronk, and he plays too, along with the Dane’s twin, Rasmus.
Other players with aspirations of making the Ryder Cup team include 2018 Italian Cup winner Thorbjorn Olesen and Spaniard Rafa Cabrera Bello.
The tournament, which is also the first of the season taking place in Europe, has a purse of $3.25m…
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