Four wins in four years have seen Matteo Manassero rise to the pinnacle of the European game, all by the tender age of 20. Hard to believe he’s only 20 years old though, as we feel like we’ve been watching him play forever – he had a great amateur career before turning professional on May 3, 2010 at the age of 17 years old.
At the age of 16, Matteo Manassero became the youngest ever winner of the British Amateur Championship which qualified him for the 2009 Open Championship where he played alongside Tom Watson and Sergio Garcia for the first two rounds. He ended up making the cut and winning the Silver Medal as leading amateur, finishing tied for 13th place. Manassero also became the youngest player to ever make the cut at the Masters Tournament at 16 years, 11 months and 22 days old, breaking the previous record by nearly 2 years. At the time, Manassero was also on top of the World Amateur Golf Rankings and remained at number 1 for 18 weeks until turning professional.
His first professional victory came soon after turning professional at the Castello Masters Costa Azahar in Valencia, Spain in October of 2010, making him the youngest ever winner on the European Tour and also securing his full European Tour playing privileges for the next two seasons. He also had a near victory at the 2010 UBS Hong Kong Open where he finished T2, one stroke behind winner, Ian Poulter and ended the season as the Sir Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year. He would capture his second victory at the Maybank Malaysian Open in April 2011 and his third victory at the Barclays Singapore Open in November of 2012, making him the first teenager to win three times on the European Tour. After growing into his body a little more and physically maturing (distance was an issue early in his career), Manassero won the biggest tournament of his career to date – the 2013 BMW PGA Championship in a three-way playoff to become the youngest ever winner of the tournament. Manassero now has his eyes set on the future and hoping to not only win more tournaments, but collect enough points to join the European Ryder Cup team in 2014 at Gleneagles, Scotland!
We were actually fortunate enough to watch Manassero play at the 2010 UBS Hong Kong Open, as well as recent Web.com Tour winner Seung Yul Noh. Since then, he’s gotten noticeably taller and bigger as he grows into his body, just take a look at the video below! He’s already had a career that his hero and the legend, Seve Ballesteros, would probably be proud of. We can only see great things for him in the future and look forward to watching his career unfold!
Souce: Matteo Manassero, GolfingWorldTV
