The Austrian golf professionals Bernd Wiesberger and Matthias Schwab will start 2020 on Thursday at the first of the eight tournaments in the high-end Rolex series.
The past season was the most successful for Wiesberger and Schwab. The Burgenland player recorded three victories and, thanks to further top places, was finally third in the European Tour overall ranking. In the world rankings, he improved from the 185th to the year after his wrist surgery
22nd position. Schwab was 17th in his second full professional year on the European Tour and moved from position 228 to 79 in the world rankings.
In the previous year, Wiesberger had won two Rolex competitions in Scotland and Italy. “What I have achieved gives me a positive outlook for the coming season,” said the 34-year-old when looking back at 2019. For the new year, he has set himself the goal of increasing consistency. “It was not what I would like it to be all year round. The good weeks are very good, I want to try to have more of it.”
Schwab: “Be more aggressive”
The Styrian Schwab also had some very good weeks last year, as evidenced by ten top ten ranks. He was second twice, this year it should also work for the 25-year-old with the first win. “I just have to play even more aggressively and go smoothly,” said Schwab, summarizing the decisive tournament phases in 2019. In Turkey, he narrowly missed the start-finish victory in a Rolex competition in the jump-off in November.
As a start in 2020, both ÖGV professionals chose a large competition, the competition is fierce. In the Persian Gulf, the four-time major winner Koepka, defending champion and British Open champion Shane Lowry and two-time winner Tommy Fleetwood (2017, 2018) tee off on the Par-72 course. This trio is the top flight for the first two days. Wiesberger started shortly before with the world ranking seventh Patrick Cantlay and the Spanish star Sergio Garcia. Schwab begins the 15th edition at the Abu Dhabi Golf Club together with ex-Masters winner Charl Schwartzel and only 15-year-old Joshua Hill. The Englishman has won a world ranking competition as the youngest player to date. On a training session on Monday, he even outperformed Koepka, who is making a comeback after a three-month injury break.
The stars pick the biggest tournaments from the calendar – and almost all of them are staged in North America. The Rolex tournaments, at $ 7 million each, are below the average of the US PGA tour. As number 23, Wiesberger has many options to choose from: The Burgenlander remains loyal to the European tour, but also plays overseas, such as the Players Championship
March 12 in Ponte Vedra Beach.
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