Pablo Larrazábal and Jorge Campillo will lead the Spanish assault on the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters title, the only European Tour tournament to be held in our country during the 2020 season, which will be hosted by Real Club Valderrama from September 3 to 6.
Both players have already tasted success in this edition of the Race to Dubai, as Larrazábal won the Alfred Dunhill Championship last November and Campillo won his second European Tour title at the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters.
On the tour’s recent UK tour, Campillo finished eighth in the ISPS Handa Wales Open at Celtic Manor last week while Larrazábal made the cut in all four tournaments he played since the resumption of the Race to Dubai 2020 at the Betfred British Masters.
Both golfers are ranked in the top 25 of the Rolex-sponsored Race to Dubai rankings and will lead the strong local squad at an icon of continental golf, the Real Club Valderrama, which hosts its 25th individual tournament on the European Tour.
To this figure must be added the unforgettable Ryder Cup played on its impeccable course in 1997, a competition in which the great Seve Ballesteros captained the team from the Old Continent. José María Olazábal, double Masters winner and bastion of European golf, won there the second of the three Ryder Cups he won as a player (to which he would add the triumph as captain in the so-called Miracle of Medinah in 2012). The San Sebastian native returns to Valderrama to continue teaching and to face a course that is very dear to him.
Also defending the Spanish colors will be players who have already lifted titles on the European Tour such as Gonzalo Fernández Castaño (KLM Open 2005, BMW Asian Open 2006, Telecom Italia Open 2007, Quinn Insurance British Masters 2008, Barclays Singapore Open 2011, BMW Italian Open 2012, BMW Masters 2013), Álvaro Quirós (Alfred Dunhill Championship 2006, Portugal Masters 2008, Commercial Bank Qatar Masters 2009, Open de España 2010, Dubai Dessert Classic 2011, Dubai World Championship 20011 and Rocco Forte Open 2017), Alejandro Cañizares (Imperial Collection Russian Open 2006 and Trophée Hassan II 2014) or Adrián Otaegui (Saltire Energy Paul Lawrie Match Play 2017 and Belgian Knockout 2018), recently qualified for the U.S. Open thanks to his great role in the recent British Tour of the circuit. They will be joined by other golfers with a European Tour card or with notable international experience such as Adri Arnaus, Nacho Elvira, Pedro Oriol, Sebastián García Rodríguez, Samuel del Val, Eduardo de la Riva and Alfredo García-Heredia.
In addition, two promising amateurs, Eduardo Rousaud and Alvaro Mueller-Baumgart, will round out the national team. Rousaud will use the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucia Masters as an opportunity to test himself against the best just before the U.S. Open to be played at Winged Foot next month. The Spaniard has qualified for the second major of the season due to his remarkable performance in the world amateur ranking (currently fifth), and will be accompanied at Valderrama by Mueller-Baumgart (Spanish amateur champion and Spanish U18 champion on two occasions, among other titles), thirteenth in that ranking.
All the Spaniards will want to follow in the footsteps of Sergio García, triple winner at Valderrama, and will strive to improve on the great performance of the Armada in the last edition, when four of its members (Jon Rahm, Álvaro Quirós, Adri Arnaus and Eduardo de la Riva) tied for second place and only lost to the champion, South African Christiaan Bezuidenhout.
The tournament held at Real Club Valderrama marks the return of the European Tour to mainland Europe since the resumption of the Race to Dubai 2020, which resumed last month at the Betfred British Masters. The tournament is the first of the three-week Iberian tour, which will continue with two events in Portugal.
The Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters, a European Tour tournament valid for the Race to Dubai that is held thanks to the essential collaboration of Real Club Valderrama, is sponsored by Estrella Damm and the Ministry of Tourism, Regeneration, Justice and Local Administration of the Andalusian Regional Government, as well as being co-financed with European funds, declared an event of exceptional public interest by the Spanish Government, and supported by the Royal Spanish Golf Federation.
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