What a long strange trip it has been for Matteo Manassero to return to the winner’s circle.
On the weekend of the 10-year anniversary of his BMW PGA Championship victory, the 30-year-old Italian claimed his maiden European Challenge Tour title at the Copenhagen Challenge.
Manassero, a four-time DP World Tour winner and the youngest player to win three times on the European circuit, shot a bogey-free final-round 66, which was good enough for a one-shot victory at 12 under par and his first title since winning the 2020 Toscana Open on the Alps Tour.
Born near Verona, he started playing golf at age three with a set of plastic clubs. At 16, he became the youngest winner of the British Amateur Championship in 2009 before taking the silver medal for low amateur in the 2009 British Open Championship. Manassero climbed as high as 25th in the Official World Golf Ranking and seemed destined for greater things. But the short-hitting Italian chased distance gains and lost control of his swing and his game. He entered the week No. 575 in the world.
Manassero started the day six shots behind overnight leader Matias Honkala, but made a three-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole to secure his first DP World Tour-sanctioned victory since his heroics at Wentworth in 2013.
“There are a lot of emotions,” he said. “It has been 10 years now since I won on Tour so I guess May is a good time of the year for me.
“My wife never caddies for me but this week she was here, so it’s been the perfect week and as good as any other I’ve ever had.”
Manassero started strongly in the final round with back-to-back birdies from the second hole before tacking on another at the eighth. With Honkala dropping back and South African teenager Casey Jarvis also picking up shots, Manassero was in a three-way share of the lead. However, he rose to the top with birdies at the 14th and 15th before the clincher at 18 to be crowned champion at Royal Golf Club by one stroke ahead of Jarvis. Manassero enjoyed the moment after being lost in golf’s wilderness for a decade, a can’t-miss-kid who has been one of the biggest disappointments in the professional game.
“I’ve had a lot of down periods during those ten years but I’m still here and now I’m holding the trophy, which means I’ve done a lot of good things as well in that period of time,” he said. “In the past maybe I didn’t enjoy enough of the good times, but I definitely will now.
“I came into this week with doubts about my game and I wasn’t feeling great. This golf course isn’t a course that you can afford not to be feeling great but sometimes you grind, and it doesn’t happen and sometimes all of a sudden it clicks.
“Golf is a strange and hard to understand at times, and probably we shouldn’t try too hard to understand it.”
Manassero improved to fifth on the Road to Mallorca Rankings up from 40th position, while Jarvis moves up to second from 15th place.