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For 156 players at Lumine, the next six days could be career-defining.
A ticket to the European Tour for 2018 awaits for the top 25 and ties at the end of what can only be described as one of the toughest tests in golf.
As players get set to tackle the Hills and Lakes Courses at the Spanish resort, we’ve broken down the field, which includes aspiring pros looking to make the step up for the first time right up to a seven-time European Tour winner and also a Ryder Cup player…
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• There will be 32 countries represented at Lumine this week. Perhaps unsurprisingly, England is the country with the most players in action with 33. Zimbabwe (Scott Vincent), India (Shubhankar Sharma), Mexico (Oscar Serna), Poland (Adrian Meronk), Portugal (Jose-Filipe Lima) and Iceland (Birgir Hafthorsson) have just one player each.
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• For 24-year-old Adrian Meronk (above),
there’s the opportunity for history to be made. Should he finish in the
top 25 this week, he will become the first Polish player to have a full
European Tour card.
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• To highlight just how tough this Final Stage is, the field boasts a seven-time European Tour winner. His name is Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano and he returns looking for his European Tour card after losing his status on the PGA Tour last season. He also has fellow Spaniard and three-time European Tour winner Alvaro Quiros caddying for him this week.
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• There are also two six-time European Tour winners in the field: Simon Dyson and Niclas Fasth. Dyson’s last European Tour win came way back in 2011, while Fasth’s most recent success was more than ten years ago in 2006!
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• Did we also mention a Ryder Cup player? That’s Oliver Wilson (below). The Englishman was selected by Sir Nick Faldo as a captain’s pick for the 2008 match at Valhalla and has one European Tour win to his name at the 2014 Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.
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• In total, there are 11 players with more than one European Tour win in the field. They are Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano (7), Simon Dyson (6), Niclas Fasth (6), Ricardo Gonzalez (4), Johan Edfors (3), Richard Green (3), Hennie Otto (3), Anders Hansen (3), Simon Khan (2), Julien Quesne (2) and Alejandro Canizares (2).
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• Remember Jin Jeong? The 2010 Amateur champion and Open silver medallist? He’s vying to get his European Tour back after a disastrous 2016 season where he failed to make the cut in a single event.
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• Almost a third of the field (46) will be made up of Brits. That includes 33 Englishmen, nine Scots, two Northern Irish players and two Welshmen.
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• At 6ft 9in, Jonathan Thomson is comfortably the tallest player in action at Q-School. Should he gain his card, he would also become the tallest player on the European Tour – three inches taller than 6ft 6in Chris Wood.
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• And finally, just a wee word of warning. At last year’s Q-School, only three of the 30 players who earned their cards for the 2017 season went on to keep them. They were Eddie Pepperell, Edoardo Molinari and Ashley Chesters.
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