Campillo leads qualifiers into Antwerp match play

Neil cards 68 on day of drama and excitement at new Belgian Knockout

Spain’s Jorge Campillo led the qualifiers into the match play stages of the inaugural Belgian Knockout as the experimental format delivered plenty of drama yesterday.

Campillo carded a second consecutive 67 at Rinkven International Golf Club to finish eight under par, a shot ahead of England’s James Heath.

Local favourite Thomas De try was part of a five-strong group on six under as fellow Belgian and tournament host Thomas Pieters also advanced on two under, with 11 players on one over par eventually left to battle it out for the remaining eight places in the top 64.

Australia’s Jordan Zunic and New Zealand’s Ryan Fox were eliminated on the first play-off hole after wild drives led to a triple bogey and double bogey respectively, while Zimbabwe’s Scott Vincent made the only birdie to secure his place in the knockout stages.

Laurie Canter and Jens Fahrbring then birdied the second extra hole to go through and leave six players competing for the last five places, with Callum Shinkwin’s double bogey on the third hole allowing Romain Wattel, Jinho Choi, Felipe Aguilar, Ryan Evans and Tom Lewis to advance.

Bradley Neil of Blairgowrie carded a blistering 68 – eight shots better than Thursday’ s opening round–to lie two over par – one ahead of Drumoig’s Connor Syme, who fired a second round 70.

Stephen Gallacher is two under after yesterday’s 69, one ahead of David Drysdale and two in front of Richie Ramsay and David Drysdale.

Vincent told Sky Sports: “I was really nervous, especially being the first to play. It adds a lot of excitement and drama to golf.

“I think the spectators will appreciate it, it gives us golfers a bit of a heart attack now and then but all in all I think it’s going to be great.”

The remaining players 64 will contest nine-hole strokeplay matches over the weekend, with three rounds of matches taking place today and the quarter-finals, semi-final and final tomorrow.

To give some advantage to the leading players after 36 holes, if any of the first knockout round matches involving the top 16 seeds are tied, the seeds will go through to the second round. In all other tied matches a tie will be resolved by a play-off.

“It’s man to man, you don’t need to worry about the rest now, you just need to worry about your opponent,” said Holland’s Joost Luiten, who qualified for the knockout stages thanks to playing his last three holes in three under par.

The Belgian Knockout is the first European Tour event to be staged in the country since 2000 and former Ryder Cup star Nicolas Colsaerts added: “It’s amazing. You can see the amount of people that have turned up yesterday and today.”

Former Open champion Paul Lawrie has pulled out of next week’s European Tour flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth due to a foot injury.