Fota Island Golf Club
The PGA EuroPro Tour will one of the 2011 season at the prestigious Fota Island Golf Club in Cork, Ireland. This will be the first time the Tour has held a tournament at the venue, which is widely regarded as one of the finest golf courses in the country.
The tournament will take place from Wednesday, July 6th to Friday, July 8th and will feature some of the brightest young golfers in Ireland and the United Kingdom.
“It’s fantastic news that Fota Island will be on the schedule this year and we’re very proud to announce this as it shows our commitment to adding quality courses to the calendar each year,” said Danny Nickless, Operations Manager for the PGA EuroPro Tour.
“Fota will be one of the highest quality venues that the Tour has ever visited and the players will be met with a world class golf course.
“Fota has staged the Irish Open in the past and Jonathan Woods and his team are very keen to support up and coming professionals as well as those playing on the main tour, I would like to thank Jonathan for giving the tour the opportunity to visit Ireland again. Our members should be extremely excited about visiting such a great golfing venue.”
The EuroPro Tour is the leading golf developmental tour in Europe and a host of former players have gone on to lift some of the biggest titles in the world.
Louis Oosthuizen won the 2010 Open after playing on the EuroPro Tour in 2003, while Ross Fisher was a member of the winning European Ryder Cup team only five years after playing on the EuroPro Tour.
A number of players, including Lloyd Saltman and Daniel Gaunt, will also be playing on this year’s European Tour after playing on the EuroPro Tour in 2010.
Gaunt’s story should act as an inspiration to any hopeful golfer. He lost his European Tour card in 2004 but practised hard and was determined to get back. He won the first EuroPro Tour event of 2010 – at Wensum Valley in Norfolk – and then struck a rich vein of form that saw him also finish twice on two occasions and third three times.
His performances on the EuroPro Tour saw him get a sponsors’ invite in to the English Challenge on the second-tier Challenge Tour and victory on that ensured he would spend the rest of the season playing on the Challenge Tour.
He then finished in the top 30 in nine out of ten Challenge Tour events to secure a return alongside the European golfing elite.
