Matthieu

Pavon

The 29-year-old, No. 276 in the world rankings, came into the final round at the Dom Pedro Victoria Golf Course in Vilamoura sharing the lead with Pieters, and appeared to be on cruise control with four birdies through his first 11 holes. But disaster struck on No. 12 when he found water three times and made triple. He rebounded with a birdie on 13, but two more subsequent bogeys left with him with a final-round 70 and a share of second place with Danes Nicolai Hojgaard and Lucas Bjerregaard. On the season, Pavon has made 13 cuts in 25 starts with two top 10s and stands 70th in the Race to Dubai. He’s set to make his tournament debut this week in the European Tour’s penultimate event, the AVIV Dubai Championship, played at the Fire Course at Jumeirah Golf Estates.

The 28-year-old Pavon, in his fifth full season on the European Tour, has gone 5-of-9 in cuts made this season, but he’s seen weekend action the last two weeks straight in Spain. At the Gran Canaria Lopesan Open two weeks ago, Pavon notched his 10th career top-10 finish with a T-8. He was just two shots behind eventual winner Garrick Higgo to start the final round following a 66-64-64 start, but he labored to an even-par 70 with three birdies against three bogeys on Sunday to finish nine shots back. Last season, Pavon made 16 cuts in 22 starts, yet he posted just one top 10 (T-6 at Hero Open). His best career result to date is a T-2 at the 2019 Afrasia Bank Mauritius Open.

The Frenchman was one of three golfers to test positive for COVID-19 ahead of last week’s Golf in Dubai Championship (Tom Lewis, Ondrej Lieser). He’s feeling fine but will be forced to sit this week out as well. Using a translation of his most recent social media post, “I’ve been isolated in my room for nine days now and despite the fact that I have no symptoms, the Dubai authorities will not allow me to take the start on Thursday morning.” It was a disappointing finish to the season for him but there is plenty to be happy about moving forward. He broke through with his first European Tour win earlier this year at the Wales Open. Gamers should remove him from all weekly lineups, though.

The Frenchman heads into the weekend sharing second spot with Brandon Stone and Thomas Detry, just one shot back of the leader Calum Hill and one clear of a pack of four players that includes his fellow countrymen Benjamin Hebert and Antoine Rozner. With the exception of the fourth hole on Thursday, this has been an error-free week for Pavon – and he made up for that one mistake with a birdie at the fourth on Friday. He added more red at the first and second on the way out and then the 14th, 15th and 18th on the return home. He started the day T6 and ended it T2 which makes it seven straight rounds in the tournament that he has been inside the top ten. In 2017 at this course he sped through the field all week for T5. Last year he was never worse than T6 when eventually T2 at Anahita. He averages 67.50 through those ten circuits.

That’s T3 on the live board with day one coming to a close. The Frenchman was runner-up at Anahita 12 months ago and also made the top five in his one start at Heritage two years ago. He’s now played nine rounds at the event and eight of those have been in the 60s. This latest one featured six birdies against a lone bogey. The World No. 439 started his morning at No. 10 and, after a par-par start, ticked 12 and 13. From there, he added circles on the par 5s at 18 and 2 and hit back from a bogey at No. 4 with back-to-back gains at 6 and 7. This is his lowest opening round since June’s Andalucia Masters.

You’d have got good odds that the Frenchman would be looking at retaining a European Tour card for a third time this month when he started his first Challenge Tour campaign in 2016. At the time he had but a handful of third tier Alps Tour starts behind him the previous season and not one top ten at that level. However he finished sixth on the CT four years ago and then 49th in his rookie ET season – it was some climb. However, and perhaps somewhat understandably, there has been a drop in standards since and he needs to address it in the next two weeks to guarantee his card for next year at 103rd in the rankings. He’s not absolutely desperate, but with just two top 20s in 25 starts and a 2-for-3 record at the tournament, it might yet go down to the wire.

This has been a peculiar season for the Frenchman. He kicked it off nicely with T2 in the Mauritius Open and has added two T10s, a T23 and a T24, but otherwise he has 14 missed cuts and three failures to better T40. The T10s came in the BMW International Open and the Scandinavian Invitational – in the latter he opened with a 74 for T124 and raced through the field. Poor starts have blighted him recently. That effort in Sweden was one of four consecutive Thursdays when he took dinner lying outside the top 120. Only in Gothenburg did he turn it around. He has finishes of T38-MC in the tournament the last two years.

That afternoon lap at Valderrama left him two behind fellow Frenchman Victor Perez, who set the clubhouse target on Thursday morning. Pavon had missed his last four cuts before his strong display in Munich although he did come through U.S. Open qualifying to make the field at Pebble Beach (73-74). It looked as if he could reel in Perez after starting out with four red circles in his first six holes (2, 3, 5 and 6). But he played the second two-thirds of his round in even par after balancing birdies at 13 and 17 with bogeys at 12 and 18. This is Pavon’s first start at Valderrama and so far so good.

A qualifier via the Walton Heath sectional the Frenchman will be looking to build on a sneakily impressive T25 in his championship debut 12 months ago at Shinnecock Hills. He was 9-under through the 36 holes in England and that effort must have been some boost to the confidence for a man who had missed his previous three cuts and has made just one top 35 (that T24) since he was T2 in his season starter at the Mauritius Open. Indeed he is just 5-for-14 in 2019. In that debut last year he stroked an opening lap of 71 to lie T6 after 18 holes. Beware however. In his last 18 starting laps he has failed to equal never mind break 72 no less than 11 times.