Ana Peláez has closed a more than notable season on the Ladies European Tour with a solo third place in the Spanish Open, the best Spaniard on the board, and a fifth place in the circuit ranking. Rather than setting a specific goal, such as winning the tournament or the Race to Costa del Sol, the Malaga native had been insisting all week that her real purpose is to feel good about herself on the course, enjoy, and from there see what happens. “It’s been a very special week. I feel very happy, I feel very good, I’ve managed to enjoy on the course and for me that’s like a victory. I saw myself with chances to win but in the end, I play my golf, I try to do as little as possible and what happens around me doesn’t depend on me. I tried until the last hole and it couldn’t be this time, but I’m very happy anyway,” she said shortly after signing an excellent final card of 68 strokes.
And she added, about the recently finished season: “The season has been a learning process. Golf has made me learn things that I didn’t expect at the beginning of the season, I started so well… So I’m very grateful to finish like this now and it’s going to make me a better player and person”.
The other Spaniard who made it into the top ten of the tournament in the end was the very young amateur from Madrid, Andrea Revuelta (-10), who came back with fantastic birdies on holes 14, 16 and 18, to secure a place among the top ten (7th). Revuelta somehow takes over from another Spanish amateur, Cayetana Fernández, who last year finished in fifth position, which gives us an idea of how the new generations of our women’s golf are coming along.
Aside from that final result, really spectacular in an edition of the Spanish Open that is for many the best in history, due to the quality of the roster of participants, a somewhat more concrete fact can be noted that also says a lot and good about a player of only 17 years old: only four players have closed the tournament with four cards under par and she, Andrea Revuelta, has been one of them. The other three have been precisely the first three classified, Ashok, Van Dam and Peláez. To some extent it is no longer news to see an amateur player playing very well at golf and signing low rounds in a professional tournament, as they come better and better prepared, but perhaps it is more striking that she is able to do it for four days (Cayetana, by the way, also achieved it last year, although this year she had to wait until the last round to finally beat the Las Brisas course, with an excellent 68).
Once the round was over and after attending to the media, Andrea crossed paths with Carlota Ciganda and the Navarrese told her, just like that, out of the blue: “I’ve seen you working very well this week, keep it up”. Well, that’s it, nothing more to add, much less when it comes to, let’s repeat, a woman of only 17 years old…
