Steven O’Hara hoping for a gracious return to the D+D Real Czech Challenge Open
Steven O’Hara will return to action at the D+D Real Czech Challenge Open, the tournament that saw him record the best finish of the season in 2011. Last year, O’Hara entered the final round of the event with a shared top spot on the leaderboard.
Eventually, Oliver Fisher came out of the field as the winner. Still, O’Hara was pleased with his overall performance in the tournament.
This week, he is hoping to repeat the same magic and contend strongly at the Kunetická Hora Golf Club in Drítec.
The Scotsman earned the European Tour card through the Q-School last year. He played on both the Challenge Tour and the European Tour this year.
However, he did not perform well in either of the tours and he will not be able to retain his card for the 2013 European Tour season.
Moreover, he desperately needs to record a good finish in the next two tournaments on the Challenge Tour, if he wants to make it to the top-45 in the tour rankings.
The top-45 players will get invitations to participate in the season-ending Apulia San Domenico Grand Final.
“I had a good tournament in the Czech Republic last year up until the last four or five holes and I kind of let it slip a bit,” said O’Hara. “But I have good memories of that tournament. The weather was perfect and the greens were nice and I putted solidly
for the main part, which was good”.
Talking about his performance at last week’s ALLIANZ Open de Lyon, he stated that the lack of focus on his game forced him to make some silly mistakes.
“I don’t know what the course is like for this week, but I hope it suits me and the greens are not too severe,” he said. “I made some unforced errors last week in Lyon, just a lack of concentration, and without those errors my game is good”.
According to the European Tour’s qualifying policy, the top-20 players from the Challenge Tour will get full-time playing cards for the 2013 season.
The top-20 mark seems almost impossible for O’Hara. Still, he wants to record good finishes in the remaining tournaments, in a bid to get confidence, entering the European Tour Q-School at the end of the season.
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