Robbie van West celebrates maiden victory
Open The Tony Jacklin 2017
In the playoff Dutch Robbie van West secured himself not only the victory of the first Pro Golf Tour event in Morocco 2017 but also his first win of tour ever. The 24-year-old defeated three competitors on the course of the The Tony Jacklin Casablanca. A birdie on the fifth extra hole brought van West the trophy. After 54 holes he had shared the first rank with -12 with Swiss Marco Iten and Germans Moritz Lampert and Nicolai von Dellingshausen.
Casablanca/Morocco – It couldn’t have been any more exciting at the start of the Pro Golf Tour Morocco series 2017: From the beginning the participants played good golf and low scores but the highest-ranked players had never been separated by more than two strokes. As on Friday the German Moritz Lampert, who was leading at this time, needed three putts on hole 17 and had to note his first bogey of the final round, he fell back from -13 to -12. The first playoff of the season was set. At first van West, Iten, Lampert and von Dellingshausen passed the first extra hole; at the second try van West and Iten were able to score a birdie. It took three more extra holes to find a winner, as van West needed one stroke less on hole 12, a 189 meter par 3.
“I didn’t play that good today, so I wasn’t expecting to make it into the playoff”, van West said. But with a flawless final round of 66 the Dutchman proved his scoring skills. “It was hard work, but now I’m really happy about my first win”, the new leader of the Pro Golf Tour Order of Merit said.
The Open The Tony Jacklin was the first out of six tournaments that the tour hosts in Morocco this season. The best player of those events will get a special reward: a spot at the European Tour tournament Trophée Hassan II (prize money: 2.5 million Euro) which will be held in Rabat in April. Another reason for the payers of the Pro Golf Tour to give their best at the next event: The Open Casa Green Golf 2017 will take place from February 15 to 18 in Casablanca.