Top British golfer, Brian Davis, who has been linked to Vale do Lobo since the signing of a sponsorship agreement last November, won the ANZ Championship at the Horizons Golf Resort Port Stephens, New South Wales – Australia last weekend. Brian accumulated 17 points on the last day of this European Tour event for a final haul of 44 (under the modified stableford format), one better than his compatriot, Paul Casey, who was last year’s winner.
Davis’ scores in the first three rounds equated to 70, 69 and 68, but he left his best to last, racking up 10 birdies in the final round. The 29-year-old from London picked up 200,583 euros in prize money and moved into third place on the Volvo Order of Merit behind Number One, Ernie Els of South Africa and Spain’s Miguel Angel Jiménez.
Davis summed up his victory in just one word, “amazing!”, and attributed his vastly improving putting as being responsible for his final day charge, commenting: “I can’t putt any better than that. I rolled the ball beautifully… and I still had three bogeys. But my main goal was just to go out and make as many birdies as I could and see where I could finish.”
Davis’ latest trophy has helped him jump into fourth place on the European Ryder Cup Points List with 667,730 giving him a strong chance of being in the team this year. The win also enabled Davis to move up 17 spots to number 54 in this week’s world ranking and secures him an invitation for the first world golf championship event – the 2004 Accenture Matchplay Championship in the USA.
Brian Davis was in Vale do Lobo for two weeks in January to practice on the resort’s two golf courses, the Royal and the Ocean, prior to going out on this year’s tour. He is one of three golf professionals linked to the Vale do Lobo resort – the others are former Ryder Cup Player, Jarmo Sandelin and Portuguese number one, António Sobrinho.
