April 18, 1993: The day Van de Velde won the European Tour

This first victory was anything but easy to get, in a tournament that was certainly modestly endowed (300,000 pounds sterling, in the low average of the circuit that year), but with a strong field of players. On the leaderboard, a few names are indeed very familiar: Constantine Rocca, Darren Clarke, Barry Lane, Retief Goosen, Sam Torrance, Paul Broadhurst, Alex Cejka or Stephen Ames. “There was beautiful linen! » notes Van de Velde. “It was still the beginning of the season, but I remember the media mentioning that there were the top nine in the mathematical classification for the Ryder Cup at this moment. » And there was also Jean Van de Velde, pro since 1987 and great hope of a tricolor contingent then comprising no more than half a dozen players. “I arrived on the Tour in 1989, so it was my fifth season. I had made my mark, I had learned the job, and I had already had a few chances to win that I had not converted. That week in Rome, I was probably in a slightly different state of mind, strong from past experiences., he says. Although he had not participated in the first edition of the tournament the previous year, the native of Mont-de-Marsan had very quickly felt at ease on the course of the Castelgandolfo Country Clubdesigned by the American architect Robert Trent Jones Sr. on the side of the caldera of an ancient volcano, at the foot of the summer residence of the popes: “It was a completely new course, technical, with an American design and a lot of water. It suited me perfectly. »