After Colin Montgomerie lifted the John Jacobs Trophy for the second consecutive year in Mauritius at the start of December, the contest to join the 2010 Ryder Cup captain on the Senior Tour in 2016 took place in another leading holiday destination, the outstanding Pestana Resort.
The 36-hole First Stage took place on 28 and 29 January, over two courses at the Pestana Golf Resort in Portugal: Silves Golf and the Nick Price-designed Gramacho course, with 12 players from each course progressing to the next level.
These 24 players joined the exempt players at the four-round Final Stage, contested by 60 players in total, which ended on Thursday 4 February.
The leading five players received full cards for the 2016 Senior Tour season, where they will join a cast of legends including Montgomerie and former Masters Champion Ian Woosnam.
It is the 16th consecutive year that Pestana Resort has hosted the Senior Tour Qualifying School, extending the Senior Tour’s long-term association with Portugal, and there are plenty of success stories which have emerged over the years.
The most notable is Englishman Paul Wesselingh who finished runner-up at the 2012 Qualifying School and went on to win Rookie of the Year that season before lifting the John Jacobs Trophy as Senior Tour Number One in 2013 after four victories. Wesselingh, who finished sixth on the 2015 Order of Merit, has won eight times on the Senior Tour, including last year’s SSE Enterprise Wales Senior Open, and is tied sixth on the list of Senior Tour career wins.
Another product of the Senior Tour Qualifying School is Englishman Simon P Brown who claimed his third Senior Tour title at the 2015 French Riviera Masters, finishing the season in tenth place in the Order of Merit. And American Tim Thelen, winner of the 2010 Qualifying School, has four Senior Tour titles to his name, most recently the 2014 Senior Open de Portugal at the magnificent Vidago Palace, north of Oporto.
That was the Senior Tour’s ninth visit to Portugal in total, while the Qualifying School has been held in the country from 2001, with the country always proving a popular destination among the Senior Tour membership.