Miguel Preysler, the only Spanish winner of the European Senior Individual Championships, dies

Miguel Preysler de la Riva, the only Spanish golfer to have won the European Senior Individual Championship, with a brilliant sporting curriculum since he arrived in Spain at the end of the seventies, has died at the Quirón Hospital in Marbella at the age of 67 as a result of a long illness.

Born and raised in Manila (Philippines) in 1950, Miguel Preysler de la Riva began playing golf as a child, at the age of 10, encouraged by his father, a sport that he first combined with sailing. In 1970, Miguel Preysler de la Riva played the World Amateur Golf Championship, the Eisenhower Trophy, at the Real Club de la Puerta de Hierro in Madrid, representing the national team of the Philippines, a trip used to visit Sotogrande, a place he fell in love with and where he returned later in 1977, when the multinational company for which he worked was destined precisely to this Cadiz urbanization of San Roque, where he would become its general manager, residing there since then until now.

Golfistically speaking, Miguel Preysler de la Riva has distinguished himself as one of the most outstanding senior golfers in the history of our country. Winner of the Andalusia Cup in 1990, he won the Spanish Senior Championship in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2015 -his last national victory-, as well as finishing first in the Spanish Senior International in 2004, 2005 and 2009.His most outstanding victory came in 2006 in the Portuguese course of Ribagolfe, where he won the European Senior Individual Men’s Championship, a tournament that consisted of only two rounds, and not three, as initially scheduled, due to heavy rains in the area.

Miguel Preyler de la Riva delivered cards of 72 and 73 strokes for a total of 145, three less than the Italian Francesco Ghraardi.In his extensive golfing record also include victories in the Spanish Championship for Over 30s (1994, 1995, 1998, 1999 and 2001) and the Spanish Senior Doubles Championship in 2015, apart from numerous second and third places in prestigious tournaments.Special mention, in this sense, for the runner-up in the European Mid Amateur 1998, the third places in the European Senior Individual 2007 and in the British Senior Amateur 2007 and the bronze medal he contributed to win with Spain in the European Senior Men Teams 2011.