Sitting in the shade as the warm Venetian sun bathed the ancient clubhouse at Circolo Golf Venezia, it was little wonder that former PGA Championship winner Tony Johnstone produced a smile as broad as Venice’s many waterways as he pondered his debut on the European Seniors Tour at the Sharp Italian Seniors Open.
“I am just overjoyed to be back playing golf,” admitted the Zimbabwean, with a passing nod to the health problems that threatened to bring his successful career to an early end.
Having turned 50 on May 2, Johnstone starts his European Seniors Tour career tomorrow and is looking forward to getting his competitive juices flowing on a more regular basis.
“I have only played three tournaments in 20 months so I am just delighted to be out here,” said the six-time European Tour winner. “I have been practising hard and I am hitting the ball well. I have no expectations. It has been a long break and I just want to ease into it.
“There are a lot of good players out here. I would like to have a good season obviously, but I just want to ease into it. If I have a great week this week then fantastic, if I don’t, then you have to get back into it somehow. I am just overjoyed to be back playing golf and feeling like I can compete, which I couldn’t on the main tour because I wasn’t long enough anymore.”
Lifting his spirits further was the quality of the golf course that greeted him and the rest of the field in Italy. The conditioning is immaculate and the layout a real test of shot making and course management.
“Sam Torrance and Bernard Gallacher both told me this course was superb. We came here on Tuesday evening just to drop the clubs off and see the environment, and I thought then that this was going to be a good course. Then we played yesterday and I found it absolutely sensational.
“You have to drive it really straight. You have to think on every single tee and apart from Sunningdale, I have not played a course for ten years where I’ve had to think on every tee and not just get the driver out and smash it as hard as I can. On every tee there are two or three options. If you have not got a brain in your head you are not going to feature, that is for sure,” added Johnstone.
Among those definitely expected to feature include Ryder Cup players Eamonn Darcy, beaten in a play-off last year, José Rivero and Sam Torrance, the 2005 Order of Merit winner, plus Carl Mason, winner of The John Jacobs Trophy in 2003 and 2004, and the defending champion Gery Watine.
The threat posed by Johnstone and fellow European Seniors Tour debutants Massimo Mannelli, the local favourite and 1980 Italian Open champion, and American Peter Teravainen, both former winners on The European Tour, is less easy to gauge due to their time away from top-level competition.
Giuseppe Cali, a consistent presence on leaderboards over the past three years and winner of The Mobile Cup in 2005, is the highest ranked Italian player in the field while the winner of last year’s European Seniors Tour Qualifying School, Australian Stewart Ginn, a golfer who has collected titles all across the world, is another of the leading contenders.
Last year, Watine launched his challenge with a five under par 67 which equalled the course record set by Arnold Palmer in 1979, and then finished the tournament with similar aplomb by sinking an 18 foot birdie putt to defeat Darcy in a sudden-death play-off on the Sunday.
“It was a very special moment for me, winning my first seniors title, and I look forward to defending it,” said the former European Tour player, winner of 25 titles in his native France.
“To hold the course record alongside Arnold Palmer is a great honour for me. Palmer has always been a hero of mine and the first book I ever read about golf, when I was 13 years old, was written by Palmer, so it is quite special for me to hold a course record with such a great man.”
