Laurie Canter first held a golf club in his hands in 2003. He was 13 years old. He picked it up just for fun, to see what it was all about. He didn’t pay much attention to it because his future was in professional tennis. He was one of the best in England for his age. However, the paths of sport are inscrutable and eight years later, after winning the South African Amateur Championship, playing his first Open Championship (2010) and winning the prestigious Spanish King’s Cup, where he defeated, among others, Adrián Otaegui, he decided to turn professional. In golf, of course.
At the Prat, where that King’s Cup was held, with golfers like Adri Arnaus, Pep Anglés, Marcel Schneider, Paul Dunne, Gary Stal, Steven Brown or Tom Lewis, everyone was convinced that this reed of over one ninety metres was going to be someone important in the world of golf. And he is, although no one would have imagined that it would take him more than thirteen years to conquer his first victory in a tournament valid for the world ranking. He did it today at the European Open of the DP World Tour held at the Green Eagles Golf Courses in Hamburg, Germany. The paths of sport are inscrutable.
Canter (-13), at last, has shed the stigma. He did it 209 tournaments later between DP World Tour, Challenge Tour, Asian Tour, Sunshine Tour, EuroPro Tour and LIV Golf. It has been a journey through a stormy sea. He failed at the European Tour School up to five times before getting his card for the first time in 2015. He had to return the next two years to the School to retain his rights. He has finished second six times and third three times.
Even in LIV, where he has played 20 tournaments without tasting a top 10, he has his particular tragic story. It happened at the first school of the Saudi League held this year in Abu Dhabi. He missed playing rights up to three times. He would have achieved it with a birdie on the last par 5 of the course, missed a two-metre birdie putt on the first playoff hole and ended up capitulating on the second playoff hole by sending the ball into the water. Had this series of calamities not occurred, who knows if today Canter would not be on Jon Rahm‘s team, like Kieran Vincent, one of those who did get the card at the School. By the way, Canter started playing this year in LIV Golf until Anthony Kim was signed and replaced him as a reserve player.
As you can imagine from his career, the first victory was not going to be exactly a bed of roses. It has been a very tough Sunday in Germany. The course has played very difficult, the wind has blown more than any other day and it has been more about resisting than shining. In addition to playing very well, minimising mistakes as much as possible and solving the week with a single double bogey, Canter has had the collaboration of all the colleagues who were in the last matches. Guido Migliozzi, Tom Vaillant, Jannik de Bruyn and Niklas Norgaard have all crashed. They all played over par, some more than others, and paved the way for him.
The real danger for Canter came from behind, although they were far enough away not to be able to move his chair in time. These are the cases of Bernd Wiesberger (-11), Thriston Lawrence (-11), author of the best round of the day with 68 strokes, five under par, or Keita Nakajima (-9). They had their chances, but they didn’t finish the job on the final holes, with some bogeys and birdie chances, and even an eagle chance for Lawrence on the last hole, that went to limbo.
Be that as it may, the basis of Canter’s victory this week has been his management of the par 5s, the six that appear on the Hamburg course. His partial has been, curiously, -13, his winning result and he has not made a single bogey. Only two more players leave Hamburg without a single blemish on the par 5s: Rafa Cabrera Bello and Andy Sullivan.
