Álvaro Quirós seemed to be cruising to a career re-defining victory in Sicily, before the wheels came off his game. He entered the final round of The Rocco Forte Open at Verdura with a five-shot lead and extended it by a further two after six holes as he looked set to romp home but dropped five shots on the back nine, as Zander Lombard forced a play-off. They both parred the first extra hole but the South African missed a short putt to allow Quirós to tap home for his seventh European Tour victory.
The Spaniard's last win came in 2011 and he had dropped to 703rd in the Official World Golf Ranking and lost his playing privileges, thus prompting him to focus on the Challenge Tour in 2017.
However, after taking advantage of a rare main tour start in Italy, the 34-year-old is now back on the European Tour and moves into the top 250 in the world. Earlier in the week, Quirós had spoken about taking his game back to its fundamentals after making major changes in 2012.
"I'm very happy," he said. "Obviously it shouldn't be like that but at the end it's a victory and that's the most important thing. It's been a little bit of a mess. The game wasn't that bad. Just the last few holes I started to struggle with the wind left to right and he was playing nice. I didn't have an idea how many shots I was leading by; what I knew on 18 is I have to make a putt to halve with Zander. It's a victory; it means a lot of things. Unfortunately I didn't really like how I ended the round. It should never have been that far."
