Thursday 3 August 2017 10:53, UK
Nick Dougherty looks back at a career-changing victory for Andres Romero at the BMW International Open and reviews another near-miss on the European Tour for Richard Bland.
There was a time in Andres Romero's career where we thought he might be a guy that we'd get to know well over the years, but that didn't quite happen.
We were talking about Richard Bland as the Cinderella story at the BMW International Open as he tried to hold off Sergio Garcia, but in truth, Romero's win is every bit as much.
Romero went from a guy who looked like he was going to be a shining light and a world top-30 player back in 2007 to someone who disappeared to the point where, if I'm being honest, I'd forgotten he existed!
You could never guarantee how many starts and opportunities he would get in the future, so that may have been Romero's one and only time to resurrect his career.
Sometimes you have to stand up and hit the right shots at the right time and that's exactly what he did. He had two putts for victory and left his first one short, so showed real courage to knock that in under pressure.
Thomas Detry, 24, showed on Sunday the composure under pressure that the top players seem to have, which was mightily impressive considering he was trying to win for the first time.
Some guys seem to come out when they're kids, which without being patronising Thomas still is, and have that unflappable, winner's mindset. I thought his tied-second finish was just another sign of brilliant things to come from him.
Richard Bland got a couple of good breaks around the turn, which alongside the couple from the third round made you start to think whether this could finally be the week for him.
I felt he needed the first thing to happen on Sunday to be good, which it wasn't unfortunately, but he can still hold his head high with a closing 69.
There have been times where Bland will have felt to a degree he wasted an opportunity to get that first win, whereas this week he did the best he could with what he had on the day.
I don't think Richard quite had his A-game with him but I'm still optimistic that he might still get another few chances down the road to get that elusive first win.
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