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Sergio Garcia continued his remarkable love affair with Real Club Valderrama to sit just one shot off the lead after round one of the Estrella Damm N.A. Andaluc\u00eda Masters hosted by the Sergio Garcia Foundation. The Spaniard has won the last three stagings of this event \u2013 in 2011, 2017 and 2018 \u2013 and has ten other top tens from 14 appearances at a course he admits is his favourite in the world.
An opening bogey-free round of 66 in Sotogrande left him amongst a group of five players at five under par, one shot behind Frenchman Victor Perez. <\/p>\n
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European Challenge Tour graduate Perez was also bogey-free in his round of 65 in an impressive start to his debut at the Estrella Damm N.A. Andaluc\u00eda Masters.
South Africa\u2019s Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Malaysian Gavin Green, Swede Anton Karlsson and American Sihwan Kim are also one shot off the lead, with Welshman Bradley Dredge, Japan\u2019s Masahiro Kawamura, Frenchman Matthieu Pavon and American Julian Suri one shot further back at four under par.
South African Haydn Porteous, who recorded the third albatross of the season on the 17th hole, joins Spanish pair Pablo Larrazabal and Adri Arnaus amongst a group of ten players at three under par, while world number 11 Jon Rahm joins seven other players one shot further back after lighting up his round with a chip-in eagle on the 11th hole.<\/p>\n
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<\/strong><\/p>\n Player quotes<\/strong> \u201cThe fairway is key here. Once you start missing fairways, the greens are so small you\u2019re basically meant to be shortsided on your approaches into the greens. There\u2019s a lot of slope, it\u2019s fast and the greens are really small. The moment you start missing greens it gets tricky. <\/p>\n Sergio Garcia: \u201cI love this place, there is no doubt about that. It kind of has something that helps me. Today was a great round, I hit the ball very well. It\u2019s probably the best that I\u2019ve felt in quite a while. <\/p>\n \u201cEven though the conditions were great, you still have to hit the shots in the right places and to be able to go bogey free here, it\u2019s always good.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just the first round and we have to keep building on that and look forward to a good week. It\u2019s still Thursday, you\u2019ve got to go one step at a time, there\u2019s still a lot of golf to be played. <\/p>\n Anton Karlsson: \u201cI played great out there today. I had a bogey on the last, but it\u2019s the only tee shot around here that you really have to draw the ball and I\u2019m not really a drawer of the driver, so I\u2019ve bogeyed that hole a few times before. <\/p>\n \u201cSome solid golf, didn\u2019t miss a lot of shots at all out there and that\u2019s kind of what you have to do around here. It\u2019s a great course, it\u2019s definitely one of my favourites.\u201d<\/p>\n Jon Rahm: \u201cThings did turn around on 11 when I chipped it in. I was fully aware before the round started that if you play 12 to 15 even par it\u2019s a great score. I was able to make par in those and then I hit a lot of good shots coming in, but I just didn\u2019t make the putts I had. <\/p>\n \u201cOn the other hand, I was happy I two-putted the last because you just don\u2019t want to finish on a bad note. Still, two under par is a great round; hopefully I can come early in the morning and do what the leaders did and shoot something lower.\u201d<\/p>\n A new era for the event was heralded this year when Estrella Damm, the iconic premium lager brand of the Spanish brewing company Damm, became the new title sponsor in a significant five-year deal, which will also see the prize fund rise to \u20ac3,000,000 \u2013 an increase of \u20ac1,000,000 from 2018.<\/p>\n Tickets for the Estrella Damm N.A. Andaluc\u00eda Masters 2019 hosted by the Sergio Garc\u00eda Foundation are on sale now at the event website. For more information, see the event website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. <\/p>\n The Estrella Damm N.A. Andaluc\u00eda Masters hosted by the Sergio Garc\u00eda Foundation, an event in the European Tour\u2019s Race to Dubai made possible by the essential contribution of the Real Club Valderrama, is sponsored by Estrella Damm and the Consejer\u00eda de Turismo, Regeneraci\u00f3n, Justicia y Administraci\u00f3n Local of the Junta de Andaluc\u00eda, jointly funded by EU and declared Event of Exceptional Public Interest by the Spanish Government. This tournament is also supported by the Diputaci\u00f3n de C\u00e1diz, Dubai Duty Free, Rolex, Exterior Plus, La Reserva Club de Sotogrande, Santander Private Banking and Shell. Callaway, Coca-Cola, Enterprise, Grupo Raga, ISDIN, Korporate Technologies Group, Marca, Maui Jim, el Hospital Quir\u00f3nSalud Campo de Gibraltar, the Real Federaci\u00f3n Andaluza de Golf and Volvo are official suppliers. 5J, Gadira, Grupo Joly and Varma collaborate in the event as well. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sergio Garcia continued his remarkable love affair with Real Club Valderrama to sit just one shot off the lead after round one of the Estrella Damm N.A. Andaluc\u00eda Masters hosted by the Sergio Garcia Foundation. The Spaniard has won the last three stagings of this event \u2013 in 2011, 2017 and 2018 \u2013 and has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":9695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22214","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=22214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Victor Perez: \u201cI\u2019m very pleased to keep the card clean, it\u2019s one of the toughest places to do it. I was just really happy, we had a really good game plan going in to take advantage of the softer conditions. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.holaincompany.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/images_Actual2019_rahm-valderrama-1.jpeg-WEB.jpg\")
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