Matt Wallace (-11) has won again six years later in the DP World Tour. His victory today in the Omega European Masters is the fifth of his career on this circuit and he has achieved it after beating with a birdie on the first playoff hole to Alfredo García Heredia (-11), who, on the contrary, has been left at the gates of his first victory after signing a notable Sunday card of 66 strokes.
Indeed, the Spaniard has probably been, overall, the best from tee to green of the three components of the stellar match, as he has left the ball closer to the flag and on more occasions than Matt Wallace and Andrew ‘Beef’ Johnston, but he has paid for a cold start back on the course of the Crans Sur Sierre Golf Club, with bogeys on holes 1 and 4, and then, when the engine has really started to run, he has lacked a little more spark on the greens. Just a pinch, really.
The moment @mattsjwallace won again after SIX years! 👏#OEM2024 pic.twitter.com/HLsjGuNtqN
— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) September 8, 2024
Okay, the first triumph of this 42-year-old Asturian is still going to take longer, but on the other hand Alfredo leaves Swiss lands with an extraordinary booty. With this second solo place he moves up to 58th place in the Race to Dubai, so he already has his full playing rights secured for 2025, with entry to all the Rolex Series, for example. And it’s no small or usual matter: it’s the first time in his career that the Spaniard has clinched this goal in this way, he had never been able to maintain his full playing rights before. Now, he also has his qualification for the first European circuit final play off, the one in Abu Dhabi, where the top seventy enter, and he could also get into the Dubai Final for the first time (the top fifty enter) if he gets some more good results.
Alfredo, who has had a tough time this year on the greens, had also started to fail more than usual from tee to green, the strong point of his game, during the month of August. Bad business. But a remote review with his cousin and guru, Jorge Parada, via video, in the days leading up to this tournament in Crans, has been enough this time to take off again.
The Garcia-Heredia shot that forced the play-off 🎯#OEM2024 https://t.co/Iv85tJd1EN pic.twitter.com/BGOYCng40E
— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) September 8, 2024
Matt Wallace has suffered the unspeakable to make good the four-stroke lead he started the day with. Alfredo, as has been said, started badly, but was going to sign an excellent and long partial of six less in the last thirteen holes to put the goats in the corral to the Englishman, who saw how the Spaniard played a huge 72nd hole, with birdie included, to force the playoff. There yes, in that first hole of the play off, Wallace recovered that version of a real killer that he showed years ago, with those six victories of his in the Alps Tour (year 2016), and those other four triumphs, just arrived on the European circuit, in just a year and a half (2017-2018).
A killer version at the most opportune moment, we said: He hit an outstanding wedge to the very cloth and left a splendid opportunity, which he was not going to forgive from less than two meters. Things as they are: Wallace has forgiven very little on the greens this week. To the putter, without a doubt, he owes the victory.
In those years 2017 and 2018 of wine and roses Wallace earned with all justice a Ryder player profile that then, season after season, once he lost the victorious aura, he was losing. But the Englishman does not forget: today, at the very foot of the 18th green, he finished his first statements as a winner with a round and resounding sentence: “Ryder, here we come”. Right now he leads the table with the qualification year just started (only two tournaments have been counted), there is a world left, but this guy couldn’t be clearer.
