First day of the Staysure Marbella Legends and José María Olazábal has already added excitement to the tournament, positioning himself two strokes behind the leaders at Aloha Golf, a course that is being highly praised by all the players. Five players share the lead on the first day with seven strokes under par: Colin Montgomerie, Adilson Da Silva, Simon Griffiths, Soren Hansen, and Lionel Alexandre.
Olazábal already announced in a press conference that he would go “all out”, and today he took a big step by signing five birdies and a bogey on his first nine holes, and one more birdie to close the first round in Marbella with five strokes under par, putting himself in an attacking position for the tournament. “It has been a fantastic day. Yesterday I didn’t hit the ball very well, but today I saw good signs on the golf course, I left some strokes on the greens. I didn’t make many mistakes on the course and the ones I did were not that serious. It has been a very positive day, whenever you make 4, 5 under par it’s always a good day. I think the best thing today was more my attitude on the course than my game, there are things to improve in my game, even though I had a good result, but I am more proud of how I handled myself on the course than anything else.
It’s always fantastic to play at home, and especially here, with this temperature, on this fantastic golf course, you can’t ask for more. There are many places to eat, the food is wonderful, we have the sea if you want to take a walk, being here is like being in heaven”. To find a lower round from Olazábal, you have to go back to July 2019 at the Winston Golf of the European Senior Tour.
This is how the tournament has started, with great expectation and a lot of public, among whom the young winner of the Spanish Open, Ángel Hidalgo, stood out, closely following the match of Miguel Ángel Jiménez and Colin Montgomerie.
Of the five players sharing second place, Colin Montgomerie stands out for the eight-meter putt he holed on the 18th hole to tie for the lead with a total of seven strokes under par. “It was fantastic. I was struggling a bit at the end, I made a good recovery on the 17th and couldn’t believe this finish, you try to hole it, but I would have been happy with 2 putts. I feel very good in Andalusia, I have come many times to Valderrama, the Ryder Cup, my days at the Volvo Masters, I have magnificent memories and I am enjoying it very much. The course is fantastic, for my 61 years it is a bit tiring, but making 9 birdies, a couple of mistakes for 65 strokes is very good.
I was playing with Jiménez, the favourite, and many people came to cheer us on. He didn’t play as well, but there’s still a lot of tournament left, we already know what he can do. I am in the fight, which is where you want to be.
I loved seeing Ángel Hidalgo among the public, I recognised him and I think it’s fantastic that these guys who are doing so well in the DP come to see us. This new tournament is magnificent, I hope it continues for many years”.
Brazilian Adilson Da Silva, the winner of the Legends Tour 2024, is looking for another victory in Spain like the one he achieved in the European Legends Cup in Andalusia last year; while Simon Griffiths, Lionel Alexandre, and Anders Hansen will fight for their first victory in the Legends Tour.
As for the Legends Experience, the best-ranked amateur after the first day is Vicente Rubio, who was playing today in the same match as José Mª Olazábal and Adilson Da Silva. Tomorrow he will continue his Legends experience playing in the same match as Peter Baker and Philip Golding.
Tomorrow, Saturday, the second day of the Staysure Marbella Legends at Aloha Golf will take place, starting at 9 in the morning with matches going off two tees until 11:20. In the matches, two professionals and one amateur will play. At the end of the day, there will be a cut only in the amateur classification, and 15 of them will compete on Sunday alongside the professionals.
