Tiago Cruz
Tiago Cruz
Tiago Cruz keeps strong at the Portugal Pro Golf Tour. He was for the second straight tournament the best Portuguese and although we do not known where he stands now in the rankings of this international Portuguese tour, he is likely to hold or even improved his 3rd place from the last update, one month ago.
In the 1st Quinta do Vale Classic, in Castro Marim, the former two-time national champion was 3rd place, with 68 strokes, 4 under the Par of the course designed by the late Seve Ballesteros.
Cruz was only 1 shot short of Englishman Ben Parker and Swiss Marco Iten, who could only play the title-winning play-off two days later, due to inclement weather in the Algarve.
Marco Iten – Winner
Marco Iten won on the first hole of the play-off and pocketed €2,000 of the €10,000 total prize Money at stake, for his first title at the Portugal Pro Golf Tour.
This second tournament of the 7th Swing of the 2017/2018 season seemed doomed from the start and was contested with high winds and heavy rain.
It was planned for the Castro Marim Golf & Country Club, but was moved shortly before to the “neighboring” Quinta do Vale Golf Resort.
And then came the bad weather that whipped the field and led the organization to sanction only the first round results. The second started but had to be canceled later on. It was the first time that this happened in a tour where the weather conditions are not usually an impeachment to golf, even in the Winter.
For Tiago Cruz the 3rd place was positive. He came from a 10th place in the 1st Quinta de Cima Classic, where he had tought times on the greens, but he did not face the same problem in Quinta do Vale, mainly because he managed “to hit more fairways and put the ball closer to the hole.”
“Quinta de Cima Classic is a longer course and there were not so many birdie possibilities. Here there are six holes of Par-5 and in four of them we can reached the green in 2 shots. In some of them we played a 9-iron or even less,” said the BiG player, who converted 4 of his 5 birdies in those Par-5s (holes 4, 7, 13 and 17).
On the other hand, “the course was in good shape, especially if we take into account the storm. I liked to see that the lakes were clean and the greens were a bit slow, but the ball was rolling well», he added to the Tee Times Golf.
There were 71 players in the 1st Quinta of Vale Classic, 12 of whom Portuguese, and they had the following scores:
3º Tiago Cruz, 68 (-4)
11th (tied) Ricardo Santos, 71 (-1)
11th (tied) João Ramos, 71 (-1)
11º (tied) Tomás silva, 71 (-1)
19th (tied) Miguel Gaspar, 73 (+1)
23º (tied) Tomás Bessa, 75 (+3)
37º (tied) Hugo Santos, 76 (+4)
44º (tied) Pedro Figueiredo, 77 (+5)
44th (tied) Tiago Rodrigues, 77 (+5)
44º (tied) Filipe Lima, 77 (+5)
60th (tied) António Sobrinho, 80 (+8)
68º Alexandre Abreu, 84 (+12)
The Portugal Pro Golf Tour travels now from the Quinta do Vale Golf Resort to the Amendoeira Golf Resort, in the municipality of Sines.
Hugo Ribeiro / Tee Times Golf
