Viktor Hovland has just won the Fedex Cup and the European and American Ryder teams are about to close… All of this is very good, no doubt, we are talking about the cream of the crop, but meritocracy in golf comes from much further down and there are many players who must take all the steps before shining on their own on the front line. Without going any further, tomorrow the first phase of the European circuit School starts, which is held in nine different venues until the beginning of October.
It starts in two of those nine venues, one Australian (Rosebud Country Club, in Victoria) and another English (The Players Club, in Bristol), with the participation of a single Spanish player, the Granadian Scott Fernández, who plays in English lands.
From here and successively, the nine appointments will be completed in other fields of Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Italy, England, Denmark and France, with the participation of a total of 46 Spanish players (at least they are the ones who are signed up, although perhaps some do not play it finally), a figure that would increase by more than fifty percent the participation of Spanish players in 2022, a year in which only thirty played.
This is the list of the 46 Spanish players who are currently signed up in this first phase of the School, distributed in the nine venues: Scott Fernández, Manuel Quirós, Marcos Pastor, Luis Carlos González, Antón Vázquez, Manu López, Álvaro Velasco, Mario García, Ignacio Sánchez Palencia, Mario Galiano, Álvaro Hernández, Haiko Dana, Manuel Morugán, Joel Moscatel, Víctor García Broto, Marc Sabria, Ignacio Gómez Osuna, Rubén Lafuente, Asier Aguirre, Alejandro Aguilera, Edouard Rousaud, Luis Masaveu, Ángel Ayora, David Borda, Emilio Cuartero, Juan Ramón Amador, Alex Estmages, Pep Anglés, Javier Otaegui, José Luis Adarraga, Pedro Oriol, Carlos Pigem, Jacobo Pastor, Manuel Ballesteros, Álvaro Veiga, Iñigo López Pizarro, Enrique Marín, Víctor Jiménez, Sergio Parriego, Carlos del Moral, Borja Martín, Guille Sena, Daniel García, Erik Shukhart, Rubén Pardo and José Manuel Pardo.
The number of American players signed up in this first phase, which rises to 186, is once again striking. And even more so the presence of veterans of the stature of Bo Van Pelt or Kevin Stadler, who will play at the Belgian venue. Another name also stands out, that of Kyle Stanley, who will play in Denmark and who last year was playing The Players at TPC Sawgrass… The paths of golf are inscrutable. They sure are: no one doubts that among the more than a thousand players who are going to dispute this first phase of 2023 there will surely be several future top 100 in the world. And some top 50… And even some top ten, why not.
