Rookie professional Connor Syme is celebrating in securing a first pay cheque in the play-for-pay ranks with a superb closing bogey-free 67 for a share of 13th place on 12-under par in the Portugal Masters at Vilamoura.
The Drumoig-based Scot, and brilliant winner earlier this year of the Battle Trophy at Crail Golfing Society, capped his round with four birdies from the 12th to 17th holes but, and in the final wash-up, was left ruing 11 opening pars to fall one stroke shy of qualifying among the top-10 for this week’s British Masters.
Syme had left the course sharing 11th place but then within 30-minutes found himself inside the top-10 only to drop outside minutes later before moving for a tie for 13th ahead of his official placing of 13th.
Connor Syme reaches out to secure a first pay cheque in sharing 13th place on his pro debut at the Portugal Masters.. (Photo – European Tour/Gettys)
The young Scot collected a prize cheque of Euro 29,050 (Stg 25,726) that should go to paying a few bills.
Syme had been afforded an invitation to compete on The Algarve and the 21-year old certainly grabbed the opportunity with both hands
“It has been an unbelievable week and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, so I can’t thank the European Tour and Keith Pelley (CEO, European Tour) enough as it was awesome to be out here,” said Syme.
“It was all good fun and my scoring could have been a lot better as I thought my putter was a little cold this afternoon.
“So, I am not complain about being four-under, and bogey-free, as that was good fun”.
The Portugal event was Syme’s third Tour event this year after contesting the Joburg Open earlier in 2017 and then superbly qualifying for The Open at Royal Birkdale.
“The thing is I know I can compete at this level and this result is encouraging going forward,” he said.
“Of course, this is just the start of my pro career and it is going to kick-on from here, so I will take plenty of encouragement from a good last day low number.
“It was good to keep any mistakes off my card while my caddy was a bit help today help picking the right numbers and flags to go at and what I do need to learn going forward, so it was good fun.
“So, this week was mega-encouraging. It’s also exciting, for sure as I did not know where I was playing last week and not knowing if was going to get into this event or not and it was great to take advantage of the opportunity to play here.
“So, I can’t everyone enough who made this opportunity possible.”
