Julien Sale is looking to put on a show in front of a home crowd when play gets under way in the tenth edition of the Le Vaudreuil Golf Challenge at Golf PGA France du Vaudreuil this week.
Sale could become the first Frenchman to win the event which has seen DP World Tour winners including Andrew Johnstone, Aaron Rai, Richard McEvoy, Ryan Fox and Marcel Siem triumph since the first edition took place in 2013.
The 25-year-old, who graduated to the European Challenge Tour after impressing on the Alps Tour last year, produced his best performance of the season at the Andalucía Challenge de Cádiz. There he finished in second place after narrowly missing out in a playoff to eventual winner Sam Hutsby, and he’s looking forward to producing more of his best in front of home support.
“It’s always nice to play in front of a home crowd in France,” he said. “It feels like home, and it’ll be nice to have a lot of the crowd supporting me and the other French players too.
“Since we’ve started the European swing, I’ve been playing well and I’m feeling confident. In Spain I had a good final day. I wasn’t really playing to win on the last day as I was six shots off the lead but I finished strong and ended up being in the playoff.
“That gave me a lot of confidence as it showed me that I belong out here and that I can play for wins in these tournaments so I’m hoping to build on that. I feel like if I play well, I can compete every weekend.”
Sale, who vaulted into 32nd in the Road to Mallorca Rankings following his second-place finish in Spain, is hoping his new-found confidence can help him achieve his season-long goal; securing promotion to the DP World Tour.
“It looks like I’m heading towards my goals that I set this year,” he said. “The ultimate goal is to get one of those 20 spaces on the DP World Tour at the end of the year, and I have some mini goals in between.
“The first goal was to secure a Challenge Tour card for next year which I’ve almost done, and the next goal is to be in the top 45 in the Rankings so I can play the Rolex Challenge Tour Grand Final and have a chance of getting into the top 20 at the end of the season.”
Sale joins a star-studded field in Normandy which includes Road to Mallorca Number One Ugo Coussaud, seven-time DP World Tour winner Alvaro Quiros and the youngest winner in DP World Tour history, Matteo Manassero.
Play gets under way tomorrow at 7:30am local time, with Sale teeing off alongside Stuart Manley and Lorenzo Scalise at 1:00pm.
