Dylan Frittelli (-14) has won the Bahrain Championship after signing a card of 71 strokes on the last day. The South African thus adds his third victory on the DP World Tour and the first after almost five years of drought, specifically since he won for the first and only time on the PGA Tour (John Deere Classic, 2019). He had arrived this week at the event in Bahrain as Number 434 in the world, showing slight improvements in his game and trying to shake off the disastrous aftermath of a horrendous 2023, a year in which he missed 20 cuts in 21 tournaments and lost his playing rights on the American circuit.
Frittelli, in this way, gives a new and powerful boost to his career and has done so by making the most of a playing category of the European circuit born from the alliance between DP World Tour and the PGA Tour (category 12, in which players who have finished between positions 126 and 200 of the previous season’s Fedex Cup enter).
Frittelli, who went out today as the sole leader, has found the courage and determination in the last third of the Sunday round, when it actually seemed that the opportunity was slipping away from him like water through his fingers, with a two-up partial in the first twelve holes today. But it gave the impression that nobody in the stellar match, where the South African Ockie Strydom (-9) and the Swede Jesper Svensson (-11) were also marching, was really able to take the bull by the horns, so Frittelli’s final push, with three birdies in the last six holes today, was more than enough.
Frittelli thus becomes another ‘resurrected’ from high-level golf, a figure certainly common in the sport of the fourteen clubs. Today, after the triumph was consummated, he even admitted that last year some unpleasant ghosts had appeared to him whispering ugly things in his ear about his future in high-level professional golf… And he’s only 33 years old. We’ll have to see how far this resurgence takes him. He was never what you would call a great world star, but he did reach the top 50 in the world in his best times.
Sebastián García (-6) has finally been the best Spaniard in Bahrain, although he handed in a last card of 73 that took him out of the top ten. The day was not easy, precisely, because of the action of the wind, but in view of the performance that the components of the stellar match were showing, so irregular and grey at times, it seemed a great occasion to pull a great round out of the hat that could put more pressure on the leaders. In reality, the Madrid player has not been able to find the rhythm of birdies necessary and, in addition, three short putts missed consecutively on holes 10, 11 and 12, two to save pars and one for birdie, took him out of any winning equation. In any case, the Spaniard continues to peek in one way or another at that great week. His playing sensations, in general, continue to be splendid, probably the best or most consistent of his entire professional career and next week he will enjoy a new opportunity in Qatar.
