This week we have twelve Spanish players in the Magical Kenya Open, which is held from Thursday at the Muthaiga Golf Club in Nairobi. Two of them, Joel Moscatel and Lucas Vacarisas, are regulars on the Challenge Tour calendar, and will continue to be, unless a big hit, for example in African lands, completely changes their plans. Another nine of them are regulars on the DP World Tour calendar, some with better category than others: Adrián Otaegui, Nacho Elvira, Alex del Rey, Ángel Hidalgo, Santi Tarrio, Sebas García, Manu Elvira, Iván Cantero and Alfredo García Heredia. And then there’s Manuel Quirós…
Quirós’ presence deserves a separate comment. For several reasons. To begin with, because we are in 2024 and his last performance in a European circuit tournament dates back to 2014. September 2014, to be more precise (Omega European Masters), so it’s been nine and a half years, almost a decade. Make no mistake: he is in Kenya because he earned it in his day, reaching the Final of the School last year and making the cut, which put him in a category of the circuit, the 21, which throughout the year allows entry into a small handful of DP World Tour tournaments and most of the Challenge.
“It’s been almost ten years… And the funny thing is that when I played that Omega European Masters I didn’t have any kind of category in the European circuit, nor in the Challenge. I simply went to play in June the Memorial Olivier Barras, which is held on the same course as the Omega, in Crans, where the winner receives an invitation to play the European circuit tournament… And I won it,” recalls the Andalusian player.
These are the things of Manolo Quirós, who has actually been dedicated to teaching since even before he last answered the call of the First Division. Since last June, for example, he is in Las Brisas, Marbella, and with a very tight schedule. “I am very happy doing what I do and seeing how the players I teach progress, but I love the adrenaline of competition and that’s why I always try to stay in play through the Pro-Am or the circuit organised by the Andalusian Federation. In fact, last year I won this circuit, which is about six events, and the Federation pays the winner the entry to the European circuit School… I registered on the last day of the deadline, two hours before closing. I had just made a -9 and my wife, Laura, told me, hey, you’re playing very well, sign up…”. Well, that’s Manolo’s and his wife’s thing, also a professional golfer Laura Cabanillas. But the fact is that he passed the first phase, then the second and in the Final he was close to causing a sensation…
“I knew that with the category I had achieved I was going to enter some tournament, but you never know exactly when, you have to be waiting. Last Friday I saw that I was close to entering, but I didn’t quite make it, so I was almost sure I wasn’t going to travel, but they called me on Saturday morning and I’ve been able to organise myself. What I was clear about is that I wasn’t going to come alone, so Casto Gómez has come with me, who was my caddie at the School, to enjoy the experience together. That’s what I want, to enjoy the adrenaline of competition, because I don’t come with any objective, I have nothing to lose, I’ve been enjoying my profession with teaching for a long time,” explains the Andalusian.
In these ten years of absence things, the tour, the players, have changed a bit. “In my time there were already many very young and very well prepared players, but I would say that now even more, and I also get the impression that there is more variety, from many more countries. They hit very long and they are very good… That’s why, I’m clear that I can’t just watch them, thinking how good they are. My rival is more than ever the course, that’s the one I have to try to beat every day and little by little see where I can get,” he says amused.
His reunion with the DP World Tour, in any case, is going to take place on a course that suits him very well. To begin with, because the Muthaiga Golf Club course is not very long and also it is played at altitude (it is more than 1,600 meters above sea level), which makes it even shorter. In addition, it is a rather technical course, with a lot of strategy, rather winding and with its fairways well delimited by trees, circumstances that adapt very well to the Malaga player’s game.
It is impossible not to remember this week, the one of Manuel Quirós’ reunion with the European circuit, of that great milestone of his career, precisely because it also happened in African lands. That playoff he played in the Africa Open, January 2011, against Louis Oosthuizen and Chris Wood, which ended up being a one-on-one between the South African and the Spaniard, and which Oosthuizen, winner of the previous year’s Open, 2010, would end up taking. Not only was Louis there, a recent winner of a major, but also Charl Schwartzel and Darren Clarke, who curiously that same year, 2011, would respectively win the Masters and the Open. The things of golf. The things of Manuel Quirós.
