Our man at the course, Matt Cooper, with his daily diary from this week's Challenge Tour Grand Final in Italy.
Matt Cooper reports from this week's Challenge Tour Grand Final
How does the Grand Final work?
Imagine if the FedEx Cup was any good. Okay, that's a bit unfair - the two have very different aims. But in one sense it is true - the Grand Final works brilliantly as seasonal climax in a way that the FedEx Cup can only dream of.
The main reason is that there is more than one narrative and more than just the one winner - there is not merely the tournament itself but 20 European Tour cards on offer. Perhaps it is also easier to appreciate the disappointment and thrill those players are experiencing (watching one man walk off with $11million, on the other hand, seems a little unreal and, well, obscene).
Where is it played?
We're in Apulia in Italy. If you don't know where that is (and the chances are you don't), think of Italy as a high-heeled boot. Then think of Apulia as the high-heel.
San Domenico GC is a European Golf Design track, described as a "Mediterranean links course", and it is hosting the Grand Final for the seventh time. Just yards from the Adriatic Coast it is often battered by warm winds and it utilises sweeping swales and humps to create a links-like effect. That said, the Bermuda grass element throws up a different challenge to a classic links course - the rough is tangly, gripping and sometimes difficult to move the ball from.
Although the rough and fairways are Bermuda grass, the greens are bent grass and, to counter that wind, normally run at about 9.5 on the stimpmeter (today wasn't windy so the greens appeared slow to the players). The course is attached to the Borgo Egnazia Hotel, a remarkable five star establishment that for one week every November has about 45 players, 45 caddies and assorted media people wandering around in a daze, wondering if the inspiration is spaghetti westerns, Biblical towns, Maltese monasteries or something more bizarre entirely. It is wonderfully lavish and a little bit mad (in a very good way).
The stars of the 2011 Challenge Tour season so far
There have been two - France's Benjamin Hebert and England's Sam Little.
Hebert took top billing early in the season by virtue of the three wins (the Credit Suisse Challenge, English Challenge and Rolex Trophy) that earned him Battlefield Promotion to the European Tour. The first and second of those wins came back-to-back and all three wins came in the space of just five starts.
That doesn't happen often but, coincidentally, Little ended the season doing exactly the same thing. His first title came in the M2M Russian Challenge Cup and he maintained the form to triumph in the ALLIANZ Golf Open in Toulouse the following week. He then completed a popular hat-trick with victory in the Roma Open two weeks ago.
The other name to watch is Tommy Fleetwood who has won just the once but is second in the money list behind Little and is fulfilling the many expectations of him when he turned pro. Just 20-years-old, he was second in the 2010 English Challenge whilst still an amateur and in the 23 starts on this tour since he has made the top thirty 16 times, including a maiden win in Kazakhstan.
Future stars?
The real reason to take so much notice of this event and the conclusion of every Challenge Tour season is that the graduates often go on to greater things. Although it is a slightly manipulated stat, it is still true that seven of the last eight major champions have finished in the top 12 of a Challenge Tour event (yes, even Phil Mickelson who won an event at EuroDisney, of all places, in 1993).
Last year's crop of graduates are worth looking at to see what we can expect.
Three of them have had such good seasons on the European Tour that they are more or less guaranteed starts in the Dubai World Championship due to their high position in the Race to Dubai. They are Denmark's Thorbjorn Olesen (who many tipped as a future star this time last year), Scotland's Scott Jamieson (whose fine year has been a surprise to many) and the Italian Lorenzo Gagli (who only claimed a card by shooting a sparkling final round 66 to finish fourth at the 2010 Grand Final).
Another seven players have secured cards for next year. They are the consistent Austrian Bernd Wiesberger, the Swedes Joel Sjoholm and Oskar Floren, Scot George Murray (who earned it thanks to a high profile finish at the Dunhill Links), Chile's Mark Tullo and the only two graduates to have claimed victories - England's Lee Slattery and Australia's Matthew Zions.
Of the rest, some (including Dutchman Floris De Vries) have had injury ruined seasons, whilst others have just struggled including the 2010 Challenge Tour winner Alvaro Velasco of Spain (who is still, however, close to pinching a card) and the Grand Final winner Matt Haines from England (who didn't make any money for his first 20 starts on the main tour). Graduation is a good thing but no guarantee of future success.
Round one
The leaderboard at the end of the first 18 holes almost tells the story of the Challenge Tour in microcosm - there are four players tied for the lead on five-under-par, each from a different European nation and they are chased by no less than six Englishmen one shot behind.
The four leaders show that this is a truly international tour nowadays. There is France's Julien Guerrier, Spain's Jorge Campillo, Italy's Andrea Pavan and Portugal's Ricardo Santos.
Only Guerrier is playing for a 2012 European Tour card this week (the other three are ranked in the top 13 so should be safe) so he has most to gain by remaining close to the lead. You have to suspect that it is a burden that will weigh increasingly heavy as the week wears on.
Campillo and Santos made their score most comfortably, with neither losing any shots to par. Campillo hit 17 greens in regulation and Santos was superb on and round the greens.
The presence of six Englishman in the chasing pack is significant because it has been a motif of the season - there have been eight wins in 2011 for players flying the St George's cross.
The most notable of those six are the 20-year-old Fleetwood, rankings leader Little and Jamie Elson.
Fleetwood has his parents with him this week. His father is pulling Tommy's clubs around on a trolley and had a bit of a nightmare on the first green. He left the trolley on the top of a knoll behind the green and then cringed as the trolley and clubs crashed to the grass as Tommy attempted to hole a 12-foot par putt.
But Fleetwood is suspected to have something special and focus is part of the equation - he holed the putt with little fuss and then grinned at his dad's misfortune.
Little is playing this week like he doesn't have a care in the world. It's unlikely to be quite that simple, but he does recognise that he has the important business (next year's card) wrapped up so anything he achieves this week is a bonus. His caddie felt that a round of six- or seven-under was there for the taking and that Little could have made it with a bit of luck on the greens.
Elson is in an intriguing situation. He is ranked 24th on this tour and 124th on the European Tour. The projected rankings after the first round have him in 18th place but there is one thing for sure - there will be lots of changes in the next 54 holes.
