This week’s ISPS Handa World Cup of Golf has a distinct Challenge Tour flavour, with six players from the 2016 Road to Oman and 13 alumni all set to tee it up at Melbourne’s Kingston Heath Golf Club.
More than a third of the 56-man field can count the Challenge Tour as an important part of their development, so ahead of the start of the prestigious tournament, here’s everything you need to know.
The super six
Ryan Fox, Romain Langasque, José-Filipe Lima, Duncan Stewart, Martin Wiegele and Darius van Driel all played full seasons on the Challenge Tour this year, with the first four on that list all finishing in the top 16 of the Road to Oman Rankings and graduating to the European Tour for next season.
Fox bounced back from the heartbreak of last year – he missed out on a European Tour card by one place in the Rankings – to enjoy a stellar 2016, finishing fourth on the Road to Oman and representing New Zealand as golf returned to the Olympic Games.
Teeing it up for his country alongside Danny Lee again, the 29 year old is still in top form, heading to Melbourne on the back of a tied-fourth finish at the Australian Open, where he played alongside eventual winner Jordan Spieth in the final round.
Langasque caps an astonishing breakthrough year, where he claimed ninth place on the Road to Oman, by lining up alongside Victor Dubuisson in an exciting French team.
The 21 year old began the season as an amateur, finishing runner-up at the Barclays Kenya Open before acquitting himself admirably at the Masters Tournament, then clocking up five further top-five finishes on the Challenge Tour after turning professional in April.
One place below him in the Rankings was Duncan Stewart, who was chosen by his old Jacksonville University teammate Russell Knox to represent Scotland this week.
Stewart’s selection is reward for his consistency over the course of an impressive year in which the 32 year old claimed a maiden victory at the Challenge de Madrid and earned five further top tens on his way to graduation.
Lima, like Fox, also competed in Rio and will again form part of an all-Challenge Tour team alongside 2015 Rankings winner Ricardo Gouveia.
The 34 year old – who will celebrate his birthday during Saturday’s third round – won the Najeti Open and sealed European Tour status with a runner-up finish in the season’s penultimate event, the Ras Al Khaimah 2016 Golf Challenge, on his way to finishing 12th in the Rankings.
Van Driel and Wiegele will also form part of all-Challenge Tour teams, van Driel alongside 2007 graduate Joost Luiten for the Netherlands and Wiegele – who tied for fifth in the 2004 World Cup with Markus Brier – representing Austria with 2010 graduate Bernd Wiesberger.
An abundance of alumni
As well as Austria, the Netherlands and Portugal, there are three more all-Challenge Tour teams competing in Melbourne this week, with Belgium, Denmark and Wales all doubling up.
Thomas Pieters follows up his Ryder Cup heroics alongside 2009 graduate Nicolas Colsaerts as part of a big-hitting Belgian team, while Søren Kjeldsen and recent Turkish Airlines Open winner Thorbjørn Olesen are a highly competent Danish duo.
Bradley Dredge, a two-time winner on the Challenge Tour, has picked Stuart Manley to breathe some fire into the Welsh dragon, while elsewhere Alex Cejka represents Germany and Byeong Hun An lines up for Korea.
Alex Noren, who graduated from the Challenge Tour in 2006, caps an outstanding year in which he has won four times by competing for Sweden, while recent Ryder Cup star Rafa Cabrera Bello, part of the Class of 2008, will represent Spain once again after finishing tied fifth in Rio during the summer.
