Securing the European Tour card – a near thing for Richard Bland
Richard Bland managed to inch his way into the European Tour by securing a card for the 2013 season.
The news came as a surprise to the Burton-on-Trent born English golfer, who said that he had to wait until the final approach of his flight of nine hours before the news reached him.
"I was on the plane home and didn't know for sure if I'd secured my card until I landed. So I had a nine hour flight not really knowing.
"I turned my phone on five minutes before landing just to try and pick up a signal. Then the first message came through and it said congratulations and that is when I knew I was OK," he stated.
The Southampton Golf Club pro finished in a tense 69th position tie at the Hong Kong Open, nervously enduring the long wait it took for the news to come out.
He is, nonetheless, pleased with the 119th position he has secured for the Race to Dubai standing, the top 119 securing a card.
The gap, by which he ended up retaining his position, was, as any purebred Englishman would put it, “a near thing”.
The tiny sum of an earned €693 was all the difference between making the Race and being the unfortunate Tjaart van der Walt, who stood 120th after the UBS Hong Kong finish.
The only person who had been able to overtake Bland at the cut off the line was 21-year old fellow Englishman, Tommy Fleetwood, who coolly carded a final 69 at the Serengeti Golf and Wildlife Estate.
The total sum, €184,018 in prize money, proved to be vital earnings for Bland’s season-finish. The previous year had been rather lucrative too for the 39-year old, who finished 65th in the Race to Dubai.
Again, thanks in large part to a tie at third place at the Avantha Masters and a fifth place tie at the Irish Open later that same year, that he secured the position in the Race to Dubai.
Challenge Tour earnings for Bland topped a modest € 9,735 at three separate events.
Bland is, nevertheless, looking forward to the season play off in 2013. He spoke about how his win by a margin had allowed for much wanted flexibility in favorably scheduling for the year’s most important event.
"It allows me now to pick and choose where I play and play in those big tournaments," Bland was reported to have said to the BBC Solent.
This year’s Race to Dubai has a fairly impressive lineup. Estimations for Bland’s final place finish at the Race are about the same as they have been in the previous years.
With slight adjustment, he can avoid a drop in his performance witnessed this season. However, he is likely to land at any position (55th through 63rd) with an expected drop of two places from his most lucrative year in 2011.
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