Matteo Manassero (-18) is the undisputed leader of the BMW PGA Championship after signing a cosmic 63 today. Three strokes already separate him from his immediate pursuers heading into the final round, even if they are not exactly the kind of guys one can trust: Rory McIlroy (-15) and Billy Horschel (-15).
A cosmic 63, we were saying. It’s not that these types of scores have never been seen on the West course of Wentworth, and today’s showers left the greens ready for a treat and it was a bit easier to leave the ball a little closer to the hole. But a 63 is a 63. Without going any further: the best record of the Italian on this course, and let’s not forget that he won this tournament in 2013 at the tender age of 20, was 66 strokes.
After winning at Wentworth eleven years ago, what was to come would come. There is no need to repeat oneself. Everyone knows well the recent and not so recent history of the brave Italian player. Let’s just remember that that bell-ringing triumph shot him up to number 25 in the world, his ceiling to date, and that, however, almost from that point he began to slide down in all the rankings, first gradually, then more abruptly and cruelly. The game of Manassero wandered through many icy and gloomy moors for many years, in search of an entrance. Then came the long and very hard years of rehabilitation, step by step, from circuit to circuit, fighting in all categories and divisions. Anyone would say it watching him play today at Wentworth with such determination and clear ideas…
Manassero has been more than rehabilitated for high competition golf for some time now. A few months ago he won again on the European circuit (Jonsson Workwear Open, in South Africa) and is already on the doorstep of a top 100 in the world that he lost in October 2014 (he is currently Number 101 in the world ranking and it would have to go very badly tomorrow for him not to get into the top hundred). Anyway, his, paradoxically as it may seem, is a ‘rehabilitation’ that does not cease. If he learned anything in the hard process it was that one can never rest on one’s laurels, that golf is in itself a permanent process of rehabilitation. So he ‘has no choice’ but to go as far as he can really go, hopefully much higher than in those sweet times, more than a decade ago.
Everything is much simpler when the putter works as the Italian’s did today. Or Billy Horschel’s. What a barbarity. At times it seemed like a duel to the death for the world throne on the greens. It doesn’t matter now who won it… The American strung together up to seven consecutive birdies with pure shots of any size and condition; the Italian saved up to two pars with putts of more than three meters, in addition to also sinking a myriad of medium and long eagle and birdie putts. A real nonsense. Alongside them, in the same match, McIlroy didn’t know whether to smile or cry, although he finally opted for the former. There he is, in any case, the Northern Irishman, ready another Sunday to honour this sport and the talents he received to practice it.
Matteo, Rory and Billy are the three main candidates. Perhaps the names of Matthew Baldwin (-14), the leader at the start of the day, Thriston Lawrence (-13) and Antoine Rozner (-13) can also be added. Therefore, there will be no Spaniards tomorrow in the fight for victory. Ángel Hidalgo (-6) threatened to get into the hot zone of the table, with an electric partial of five under for his first nine holes today, the second on the course. But the round then became too cold for him.
