Victory for Manuel Violas Jr.

Mid-Amateur Championship

Manuel Violas Jr. was the sensational winner of the second edition of the Portuguese Mid-Amateur International Championship (over 30 years old), which the Portuguese Golf Federation organized at Tróia Golf. He succeeds the German Jorg Paulus in the list of champions of this recent event, which this year increased from 30 to 50 participating players from 11 countries.

Starting the third and final day in the sixth-placed trio, five strokes from English leader Brad Smith, the Portuguese from Porto Golf Club finished it with a brilliant result of 66 strokes (6 under Par 72) - the best round of the tournament and the only one in the 60’s - surpassing it by the minimum margin.

“It’s always good to win, especially playing well, in a good tournament, with a good couse, a number of good players from various countries,” said the former national amateur international, who will be 32 next week and in the last three years has been absent from federative calendar tournaments.

“Today I played really well. On the other days, I could pull off, I had good phases and bad phases. Today I had almost no bad phases and the good phases were very good phases,” he added, referring to how he finished each of the two halves of the couse; the first, with a series of eagle-birdie-birdie; the second with birdie-birdie-birdie.

Manuel Violas Jr. totaled 215 (75-74-66), 1 under par, against Brad Smith’s 216 (70-72-72), the runner-up who was the only player who never shot over par in the three regulation rounds. Spaniard Jacob Cestino went down from second to third with 217 (72-73-72). Portugal won in every round and their main team, with Violas, Costa Macedo (Lisbon) and Romeu Gonçalves (Vilamoura GC), won the Nations Cup collective trophy. Among 16 teams and in a format that combined the two best daily results of each trio, Portugal I totaled 437 strokes (151-148-138), 5 over Par. England was second with 439 (+7) and Switzerland third with 447 (145-146-148).