Mallorca, Spain: The Rolex Challenge Tour Grand Final supported by The R&A is unique in that any one of the 45 players teeing it up can earn one of the 20 graduation spots.
Two men in the field this week have different agendas come Thursday when the tournament gets underway as they battle it out for the €500,000 prize pot.
Spain’s Borja Virto, 32nd in the Road to Mallorca Rankings, and Sweden’s Jens Dantorp, fifth, have both experienced agony and ecstasy at this event in the past. With Dantorp’s card already locked up he still knows how tough the week can be for the players trying to jump inside the top 20.
“I have been on both sides, you are either drained and disappointed or drained and over the moon. It’s a special week, we were talking about it yesterday, some people will have a nice week and some people will have a very, very tough mentally struggling week.”
Dantorp was within touching distance in 2016 to securing his card, but it was a year later in 2017 that he prevailed after a win at the Ras Al Khaimah 2017 Golf Challenge, the week before the NBO Golf Classic Grand Final, in Oman.
“That was huge in Ras Al Khaimah, I was playing to get into the final and I managed to win that one and all of a sudden I was inside the top 15 and it was the top 15 that year got a card. Then I just kept going and had a good final as well, last day I played six under and secured the card so that was huge. It was so nice standing there after the tournament and getting my promotion for the DP World Tour.”
Meanwhile Virto is on the other end of the spectrum, even though playing on home soil, he has the tougher task of needing to jump up at least 12 places in the Rankings.
“I need a good finish this week, in my head I need a top three finish, that is my goal for the week. It’s quite a high goal, but that’s what I am focused on and the closest I can get to that goal it will be a good week.”
He can at least look back on 2015, the last time he was promoted to the DP World Tour.
“That was an amazing feeling, I guess it’s a bit of a different feeling because that year in Oman, I arrived to the final and my tour card was secured already as I had won the previous week in China. So that’s what I am hoping I can achieve this week, because I really need a good finish so having a win here or securing my tour card here would be amazing.”
