Three starts, three trophies, and a Tour card he very nearly didn’t get.
In January, Jean Hugo went to Legends Tour Qualifying School and came home without a card. On Sunday 8 November he won the Champions UK plc European Senior Masters on the South Course at La Manga Club in Murcia, his third victory from three starts on the Staysure Legends Tour. Some of you might know La Manga from your own Spain golf holidays, though probably not from the top of a leaderboard. Tour School may want to review its notes. (Legends Tour)
Three Behind, Then Eight Birdies
Hugo started the final day three shots behind England’s Van Phillips and wasted no time. Birdies at the second, third, fourth and sixth drew him level on 15 under, and he kept going: one more at the ninth, two at the 14th and 15th, and an eighth at the par-five 18th. That was a bogey-free 65 for a 19-under total and the clubhouse target. (Legends Tour)
Phillips came to the last needing an eagle to force a play-off. The putt slid by, he tapped in for a 69, and missed out by one. The 18th has form for this sort of thing: Arnold Palmer eagled it to win the 1975 Spanish Open on this course by a single shot. La Manga, it seems, saves its best scripts for the final hole. (Golf Property)
Three Starts, Three Trophies
Hugo is a 22-time winner on South Africa’s Sunshine Tour, and he only turned 50 last December. His first win as a senior came at the Reignwood Legends Championship in Beijing in early October, and that earned him the status Tour School had denied him. On 1 November he closed with a 62 at Pinheirinho to take the inaugural Portugal Legends Championship, the Comporta event we previewed in October. A week later came La Manga. (The Scotsman)
He called the China win “a bit of validation after missing out at Tour School”. Two more trophies have rather settled the matter. And in the week the DP World Tour’s own hopefuls are sweating through Final Stage at INFINITUM, he offers some cheer: a bad week at Q-School is not always the end of the story.
A Leaderboard Full of Familiar Names
India’s Jeev Milkha Singh, the 2012 Scottish Open champion, finished third on 17 under. Chile’s Felipe Aguilar led at the turn, dropped shots at the 10th, 11th and 12th, then eagled the last to salvage fourth. Golf giveth, and golf taketh away, usually in that order. (Legends Tour)
Paul Lawrie, the 1999 Open champion and La Manga winner in 2022, shared seventh on 13 under with Stephen Gallacher. Gallacher still leads the Road to Cambodia Order of Merit, but Hugo has climbed to fifth, with three Asian events left, starting in Vietnam on 20 November. (Legends Tour)
Playing the South Course Yourself
The South is La Manga’s flagship: a par 73 laid out by Robert Dean Putman in 1971, later reworked by Arnold Palmer, and 6,499 metres from the back tees. It hosted the Spanish Open every year from 1973 to 1977, and its palm-lined fairways and lakes still ask plenty of a mid-handicapper. (Top 100 Golf Courses; GolfPass)
The North and West courses complete the set, and the resort’s hotel, now the Grand Hyatt La Manga Club Golf & Spa, means nobody has to drive anywhere. Head down to Cabo de Palos for caldero, the Mar Menor’s rice-and-fish speciality, and finish with an asiático in Cartagena. Nobody will expect a 65.
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