Matteo Manassero is relishing the opportunity to defend his title at the 2014 BMW PGA Championship as the gifted young Italian reflects on a year which brought him the most significant victory of his fledgling career at Wentworth Club.
\nThe 20 year old etched his name alongside such greats as Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer and Colin Montgomerie when he overcame Simon Khan and Marc Warren in a thrilling play-off to claim victory at The European Tour\u2019s flagship event in May.
\nIt was a win which propelled Manassero to new heights, and the four-time European Tour winner cannot wait to return for the 2014 edition, which once again will be played over Wentworth Club\u2019s stunning West Course from May 22-25, and relive some of those wonderful memories.
\n\u201cI\u2019m really looking forward to returning to Wentworth, especially after my win last year,\u201d said the man from the Italian city of Verona. \u201cWentworth has a really special place in my heart, I really cannot wait to get back there and I’m looking forward to defending my BMW PGA title as best I can.
\n\u201cThere are so many unbelievable players who have won the title which does make it more special. It\u2019s such an honour to be the second Italian after Costantino Rocca to put my hands on that trophy. I joined a long list of top players to lift the trophy, so it\u2019s a great privilege.\u201d
\nManassero, regarded as one of the world\u2019s most promising young golfing stars, earned the biggest cheque of his career as he took home \u20ac791,660 from the \u20ac4.75 million prize fund, but he admits that it took some time to sink in just how important his victory would prove in the context of his career.
\n\u201cIt was immediate joy when I first won,\u201d he said. \u201cBut at the beginning you don\u2019t understand how big it is and how important a win it is, how much of an honour it is for the rest of your life to have that win.
\n\u201cAfter a while you start to think about how big the BMW PGA Championship is. It sinks in, how proud I should be, so it\u2019s different feelings. Straight away you\u2019re just happy, but after a while you begin to realise how big a deal it is.\u201d
\nManassero will be joined by a host of the biggest stars in world golf next May as he attempts to emulate Luke Donald, who successfully defended his BMW PGA Championship title in 2012.<\/p>\n
Foto: Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Matteo Manassero is relishing the opportunity to defend his title at the 2014 BMW PGA Championship as the gifted young Italian reflects on a year which brought him the most significant victory of his fledgling career at Wentworth Club. The 20 year old etched his name alongside such greats as Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6187","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}