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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
He began the season extremely well, with second places in the Spanish Open at El Prat and the BMW International at Wentworth, and also won the first event of the year on the US Champions Tour (for seniors), the Mitsubishi Electric Championship in Hawaii. However, just before summer that successful run ended. <\/p>\n
With 21 European Tour victories \u2013 most recently the 2014 Spanish Open, when he broke his own record as the oldest Tour champion \u2013 the M\u00e1laga-born star has the second highest number of victories of any currently active Spanish player on the circuit. His tally is only beaten by Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Olaz\u00e1bal\u2019s 23, with Sergio Garc\u00eda having won 11. <\/p>\n
Barely minutes before this interview, his flight from Austria (where his wife is from) had just landed at nearby M\u00e1laga international airport, and on arrival at his eponymous golf academy in Torremolinos, for an event promoting golf in Sevilla province, he was the same as always: full of life and chatty.<\/p>\n
\u2013 How would you rate your season? What were your objectives at the start of the year? <\/p>\n
\u2013 The truth is I was hoping for more, especially after enjoying good results in the first part of the year, until the end of May. However, after the US Open, I suffered because my club wasn\u2019t working well enough. Maybe I was a bit stressed and this was affecting my whole game. And in the last few months I haven\u2019t been in very good form. <\/p>\n
\u2013 Stressed because you weren\u2019t achieving the results you expected?<\/p>\n
\u2013 Possibly thinking about the results. You start analysing things and that\u2019s what happens. <\/p>\n
\u2013 What goals do you have for next season?<\/p>\n
\u2013 Next year I\u2019ll start by defending the tournament I won in Hawaii and then I don\u2019t know. I have the possibility of playing in the Olympics and the possibility of playing in Europe and the possibility of playing on the US Seniors Tour. I have to study the situation to see what interests me most. <\/p>\n
\u2013 Now that you are about to turn 52, do you see yourself in the short-term more involved with the seniors or on the European Tour?<\/p>\n
\u2013 Little by little it will be more with the seniors, obviously, but hey, I\u2019m still competing on the European Tour because I see myself as being competitive and capable of winning. The day I think I can\u2019t win is the day I hang up my clubs. <\/p>\n
\u2013 And what will you do then?<\/p>\n
\u2013 I don\u2019t know. When we come to that point, we\u2019ll see. Meanwhile, you have to live from day to day. In any event, I can\u2019t stop: I\u2019m a restless soul. <\/p>\n
\u2013 Are you enthusiastic about the possibility of playing in the Olympics?<\/p>\n
\u2013 Can you imagine Pisha (his nickname) with a huge Habana cigar in the middle of Olympic Village?<\/p>\n
\u2013 We can imagine that smoking would be banned there.<\/p>\n
\u2013 In that case my cousin can play<\/p>\n
\u2013 Do you think it\u2019s positive that golf has been included in the Olympics?<\/p>\n
\u2013 Yes, because it gives golf more visibility, and an Olympic sport also has more support from the institutions to continue popularising it. I think there are more things in favor than against. <\/p>\n
\u2013 How is your golf academy in Torremolinos going?<\/p>\n
\u2013 Improving. We\u2019ve been open two and a half years, and gradually the figures are getting closer to where we want them to be. It\u2019s cost me a lot to develop, it\u2019s cost me \u2013 and is still costing me \u2013 a lot to maintain it, but hey, we\u2019re still enthusiastic and keen. <\/p>\n
\u2013 We guess that your adventures hosting major golf tournaments are now part of history\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2013 Well yes, because in the end that cost me a lot of money. Obviously, from my pocket there won\u2019t be another euro. I lost a lot, especially the last year when one of the sponsors pulled out 10 days before the tournament; but the event went ahead, because when I give my word I keep it. <\/p>\n
\u2013 What do you think about the fact that not a single European Tour event is being held in Andaluc\u00eda, when at one stage the region was the most active in this respect?<\/p>\n
\u2013 There\u2019s no money, the institutions are not interested and neither are private companies, so there\u2019s little that can be done.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Bearing in mind this reduction in the number of tournaments for professionals in Spain \u2013 which are increasingly scarce \u2013 and their limited economic budgets, the future of Spanish professionals does not seem to be all that promising\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2013 We have good players, but we also have a problem: there\u2019s no national circuit like we had in Spain a few years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 He began the season extremely well, with second places in the Spanish Open at El Prat and the BMW International at Wentworth, and also won the first event of the year on the US Champions Tour (for seniors), the Mitsubishi Electric Championship in Hawaii. However, just before summer that successful run ended. With 21 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-destinations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}