Sami

Valimaki

The 24-year-old year traded four birdies with two bogeys on Sunday. His final 18-under tally was second behind only sponsor’s invite Dan Bradbury. For Valimaki this finish earned him one of the three seats reserved for The Open Qualifying Series which earns him a spot in the field for the 2023 Open at Royal Liverpool. Valimaki was 70th in the OWGR after his 2020 Rookie of the Year campaign but dipped to 386th ahead of this week. Perhaps this big finish can get him back on track.

The 23-year-old Valimaki, who became the first player from Finland to win the DP World Tour’s Sir Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year Award in 2020, arrived at Golfclub Munchen Eichenried in Munich, Germany, off three consecutive missed cuts. But he opened with rounds of 69-66 to make the 4-under cut by five strokes, and he closed out the weekend by shooting 68-67 to post his first top-five finish since a T-5 at the 2020 DP World Tour Championship in Dubai. The fourth-place finish should help Valimaki, who’s 7-for-14 in cuts made on the season, retain his playing status for next season after moving inside the top 100 (No. 99) in the DPWT rankings. Valimaki, who won the 2020 Oman Open for his first DPWT title, is in the field this week at the DPWT’s Horizon Irish Open at Mount Juliet Estate in Kilkenny, Ireland. He’ll be making his second appearance in the event, where he finished T-12 in 2021.

The 22-year-old Finn has proven his skills at every level on his way up the ladder. He reached as high as 10th in the WAGR during his day on the Nordic Golf League then won four times on the ProGolf Tour in 2019 before testing his talents on the European Tour. Valimaki’s big breakthrough came at the Oman Open this spring, winning in a playoff over Brandon Stone. He didn’t rest on that win, though. Valimaki posted top 20s in eight of his last 10 starts of the season. That included a T5 at the season finale last week, jumping him up to 11th in the final Race to Dubai standings which is likely what sealed the deal for his selection. “It became a goal of mine, especially going into last week in Dubai, so it is an incredible feeling to finish it off with a strong final performance of 2020, and to be the first player from Finland to get this award is really special.”

It wasn’t an easy race as Rasmus Hojgaard put up a strong resume of his own this year which included two wins and top honors in the UK Swing’s mini Order of Merit. Hojgaard limped to the line, though, with finishes outside of the top 30 in all six starts after the UK Swing. Hojgaard finished 16th in the final Race to Dubai standings.

Valimaki broke through with a win early this season, at the Oman Open. He struggled a bit in his return from the COVID break (three missed cuts) but quickly found his groove. Since then, he’s rattled off seven top 20s in his last nine worldwide starts. That has him positioned at 18th in the Race to Dubai, in strong position to make a run at Rookie of the Year honors. The Finn won four times on the ProGolf Tour before making a jump up the ranks. His knack for finding the winner’s circle makes him a high-upside option for weekly gamers.

What a week for the almost unknown Finn who this time last year was doing national service and in just a sixth ET start. True, he won four times last year on the third tier and was T7 last time out in the Vic Open, but his performance was unheralded. He also recovered from a R1 74 that had him outside the top 100 on Thursday evening. Moreover, he made all sorts of scores on Sunday, starting with three front nine birdies (at 2, 7 and 8), plus a bogey at 4 and double bogey at 9. The thrills continued on the way home; birdie-bogey-birdie from the tenth, another bogey at 14, birdie at the 16th. His long game was strong, putting superb, his short game clumsy. At the last he needed birdie to tie Stone, found the green and drained from 20’0". On the first extra hole his winning birdie putt drifted agonizingly across the front of the hole, he then made a good par after another heavy-handed chip. His nerves were solid and par was good enough on the third play-off hole.

No less than four times the 21-year-old made a brace of birdies in this bogey-free lap of the Greg Norman design. The run started at the second and third, continued at the sixth and seventh, he did it again at the 12th and 13th, and completed the job at the 16th and 17th. He’s now gone 35 holes without a mistake and is 14-under in that spell. The pressure will be on him to maintain that pace in the final lap, not least because he’s in such new territory. This is just his sixth European Tour start, but it is a fifth of the season and his form has been heading in the right direction: MC-64-51-7. He played the third tier Nordic Golf League in 2018, moved to the Pro Golf Tour, at the same level, in 2019 and won there four times. “I want more of the same tomorrow,” he said after the round.