the ceremonial ride to Paris.Tomorrow is going to be hard, | Forum
Mitglied wzh123
Feb 4 '20
MANCHESTER, England -- Its the cut-throat side of European golf that often gets overlooked, a six-day slog in northeast Spain where dreams are made and careers can be shredded. Demone Harris Jersey .For 156 players, a week at school couldnt get much tougher.Next Thursday, 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) away from the opening round of the European Tours lucrative, season-ending World Tour Championship in Dubai, the final stage of the tours Q School will reach its climax just outside Barcelona.The best 25 finishers will get a tour card for the 2017 season, opening the door for sponsorship and manufacturing deals, the chance to travel the globe and play on some of the worlds great courses, and the big purses that come with it. Since 1985, 14 graduates from Q School have gone on to win a major, including Darren Clarke, Vijay Singh, Justin Rose, and Louis Oosthuizen.For the rest, acute disappointment, a year slumming it on lower-tier tours, even a return to work at the local golf club.Its career-defining, says Jack Harrison, an Englishman on his third visit to Q School. Its what we aim for, really, getting that card. It would change my life drastically.Harrison used to work as a club pro at Wildwood Golf Club just outside London but has recently been playing in the Sunshine Tour in South Africa, picking up some cash there and also from the odd event on the lower-tier EuroPro and Challenge Tours.Playing on the European Tour has been his dream, though. He grew up admiring Sergio Garcias style of play, and has always wanted to get closer to the Spaniard to learn the game. That could be a reality soon.Its all about not thinking of the carrot at the end, said Harrison, who birdied the second playoff hole at the second qualifying stage at Castellon on Monday to earn one of the last spots in the finals.Then there is Chase Koepka, one of six Americans looking to capture a European Tour card. He is the younger brother of Brooks Koepka, a winner on the U.S. PGA Tour and a Ryder Cup rookie this year.Brooks Koepka began his pro career by playing in Europe, winning four times on the second-tier Challenge Tour and then on the European Tour at the Turkish Airlines Open before switching to the U.S. PGA Tour. Chase, who at age 22 is four years younger than Brooks and lives with him in Florida, wants to tread a similar path.Its a great place to learn and improve your golf game, Chase Koepka said in a phone interview from Spain, where he was preparing for the finals. Its the best place for me to develop my golf game. You play in a lot of different conditions over here, a lot of different types of golf courses, which ultimately made my brother a lot better player. I hope it does the same for me.Around 1,000 golfers with a handicap of scratch or better entered Q School -- via a completed application form and a payment of 1,800 euros (now $1,960) -- and 71 of them have come through the pressure-filled first two stages. They will join 85 exempt players at PGA Catalunya for the grueling final event, which is played over six rounds and 108 holes. The cut comes after Day 4 and trims the field to 70 plus ties.Therell be 25 different nationalities competing in Spain, and some well-known players who are battling to save their top-level careers.Y.E. Yang, winner of the 2009 U.S. PGA Championship, will tee up after failing to earn a top-10 finish on the European Tour all season and making the top 20 only twice. The South Korean is 44, and the seven-year tour exemption for his major victory is up this year.Tom Lewis, who shot to fame when he led the 2011 British Open after the first round and eventually finished it as leading amateur, is at Q School for the first time after a highest finish of 26th this season.Edoardo Molinari, a former Ryder Cup player and U.S. Amateur champion, is back at Q School for the second straight year.Eddie Pepperell has been viewed as one of British golfs brightest prospects but he narrowly missed out on automatically keeping his card and must also qualify.Describing how his downturn in fortunes has affected his life, Pepperell wrote in a personal blog: I never envisaged that struggling on the course with my golf would have the impact it did on my mood. My quality of life waned as my golf deteriorated gradually.Especially for older players whove had a taste of golfs high life or who have families and mortgages to pay, the next week will be extremely stressful and potentially demoralizing.One bad shot could mean 12 months in the golfing wilderness.At the end of the week, Koepka said, the guys playing six rounds are going to be exhausted. Youll have to be pretty strong mentally out there. It does take its toll on you.Play starts on Saturday. Deron Cherry Jersey .5 seconds to play in the game, Kevin Love never stopped believing that they would come out of there with a win. Alex Smith Jersey .com) - The Montreal Canadiens embark on their first road trip of the season as they head out west to battle the Calgary Flames on Wednesday night. http:///...sey-large-2206n.html . After Martin Skrtel put the Reds in front from close range at Stamford Bridge after only four minutes, Hazard hit back in the 17th with a superb strike. Etoo gave Jose Mourinhos team a decisive lead from Oscars back pass in the 34th. SAINT-GERVAIS-LES-BAINS, France -- If Chris Froome wins the Tour de France on Sunday, it wont have been an easy ride to the Champs Elysees.After a pile-up forced him to run up part of Mont Ventoux last week, the two-time champion escaped from another crash on Friday during a chaotic and spectacular penultimate Alpine stage held in stormy and wet weather.Two days before the ceremonial ride to Paris, rain played havoc at the Tour, causing many crashes and reshuffling places in the general classification. But Froome was lucky enough to escape with no serious injury, and even emerge with a bigger lead overall.A crash like that could have gone either way, and Im grateful that nothing is injured, Froome said. Never a quiet day on the Tour.Since he took his rivals by surprise with a daring downhill attack that earned him the race leaders yellow jersey on the eighth stage, media reports have portrayed Froome as the inevitable winner. Day after day, as his overall lead built up, Froome kept insisting that the Tour was not over.Fridays 19th stage proved him right.Froome, who won the Tour in 2013 and 2015 and crashed out of the 2014 race, hit the ground with former Tour champion Vincenzo Nibali in a descent, soon after Romain Bardet launched a decisive attack to post the first French victory at this years race.Froome did not panic, quickly borrowed a teammates bike and salvaged his torn yellow jersey after crossing the finish line 36 seconds behind Bardet. The Frenchman climbed to second place overall after Froomes previous closest rival, Bauke Mollema, crashed and never recovered.Froome increased his lead by 19 seconds, holding a lead of 4 minutes, 11 seconds over Bardet, with two-time runner-up Nairo Quintana of Colombia moving up to third, 4:27 back.Froome slipped on road paint as he crossed a white line and hit the ground just 13.5 kilometers (8 miles) from the finish of the nervy 146-kilometer (91-mile) ride to Saint-Gervais Mont Blanc featuring four ascents.He was able to continue racing after swapping bikes with teammate Geraint Thomas.I think that I hit one of the white lines on the road and lost my front wheel, Froome said at the finish, his right knee heavily bandaged. Im okay, Im lucky that nothing is seriously injured.Froome was descending at a relatively cautious speed of almost 45 kph (28 mph) when he fell. With his jersey torn, blood dripping down his right leg, cuts and bruises on his back and blood on his right elbow, Froome understandably looked uncomfortable on Thomas bike.Despite the circumstances, Froome caught up with the group of favorites in the brutal final climb to Le Bettex with the help of teammate Wouter Poels. Jerry Mays Jersey. Froome crossed the line grimacing in pain, then put his arm around Poels to thank him for the support.I just lost a bit of skin but today, Froome said. It was great for me to have teammates all the way up until the finish there, with Wout in particular and all the guys. It was a great team effort and it feels great to be one day closer to Paris.Mollema was one of the many riders who fell in the damp weather, with Daniel Navarro and Tom Dumoulin forced to abandon.Im not too badly injured, just a hip and elbow, said Mollema, who crashed at a roundabout as his hopes of finishing on the podium in Paris disappeared. The classification is gone. Im 10th now, but that was not the goal.Bardet was the days big winner after posting his second Tour stage win.I rode with my instinct. Im second overall, I won the stage, its beautiful, he said.Spaniard Joaquim Rodriguez finished the stage in second place, in the same time as Alejandro Valverde, 23 seconds back. In the overall, Adam Yates dropped from third to fourth, nine seconds behind Quintana.The day had started quietly for Froome, who joked with Peter Sagan at the front of the pack after a group of 20 riders immediately jumped away from the peloton. The best-placed rider in the breakaway was Frenchman Pierre Rolland, who lagged 22:51 minutes behind Froome overall at the start, and Team Sky did not chase.But the ideal scenario changed dramatically when the weather turned wet. As rain started to fall, Michael Matthews was among the first escapees to be caught a few kilometers from the summit of the punishing Montee de Bisane, a 12-kilometer climb with an average gradient of eight percent.Rolland then moved away from his breakaway companions in the ski resort of Les Saisies, with former world champion Rui Costa following right on his wheel. But the Frenchman slid off the road on the descent and heavily hit the tarmac. With his jersey lacerated and covered with dirt, Rolland remounted his bike after consulting with the race doctor and finished the stage.Froome needs to negotiate one more tricky mountain stage on Saturday before the ceremonial ride to Paris.Tomorrow is going to be hard, its going to be really hard and Im sure that Im going to be a bit stiff after today, he said. Hopefully I can rely on my teammates and its just one last push.---AP Sports Writer Andrew Dampf contributed to this report. ' ' '
