Carlos Pigem (-5) has delivered his second consecutive level par card this Friday at the Final Stage of the Asian Tour Qualifying School and remains within the main objective. That is, in card positions. Specifically, he is in 20th position, with a one-shot margin over that tied 35th place, which are the ones who will earn playing rights next Sunday after the fifth round.
Today the third round was played. Pigem tackled the C/D course at the Lake View Resort in Hua Hin, Thailand, and signed for a 71, with three birdies and three bogeys. The most delicate moment came between holes 12 and 14, where he precisely strung together the three errors consecutively. Credit must be given to his reaction, with a quick birdie on 15 to stop the bleeding.
In short, Carlos has taken another step forward in his goal of regaining his Asian Tour card, although the job still needs to be finished. He doesn’t have much room for manoeuvre. Obviously, anything under par on Saturday and Sunday will guarantee him the card. Those are the calculations he must make in his head.
More problems face the other Spaniard still standing in this Final Stage. We refer to Agustí Quinquilla (+1). The golfer from Badalona has run out of room. Today he signed for a 72 on the A/B course at Lake View and is on the ropes. He occupies the 97th position and will need to have a very good round this Saturday to make the second cut of the week with the top 70 and ties. He is not far off. Right now, that line is set at -1. The cut will be made after Saturday’s round.
He is still really in the fight. Besides being two shots away from tomorrow’s cut, the card is five shots away, a perfectly bridgeable distance in the 36 holes remaining to complete the competition. Quinquilla made two bogeys and three birdies today. Particularly painful were the two consecutive bogeys on holes 13 and 14, a key moment in the round to know which way the result was going to break.
The leader of the Final Stage is the Japanese Tomohiro Ishizaka (-12), with a one-shot margin over the second position, which includes, among others, the Mexican Roberto Lebrija (-11), one of the protagonists of the book Jon Rahm: señalado por los Dioses. Also noteworthy is the performance of the Korean amateur Minchan Kim (-10), positioned high on the leaderboard and very close to the card. In the top 10 of the tournament, we currently do not have any European players. The best-ranked is the Frenchman Alexis Leray, in 14th place. The next is Carlos Pigem.
