DP World Tour winner Rafa Cabrera Bello is hoping to make the most of his past experiences in the kingdom when he tees it up at The Royal Golf Club next week for the 2025 Bapco Energies Bahrain Championship.
The 40-year-old Spaniard competed both times the DP World Tour held events in Bahrain – including the Volvo Golf Champions in 2011 and the Bahrain Championship last year.
He is determined to put up a stronger challenge for the victory this time around, and will be banking on the “course knowledge” he has accumulated to help him achieve his goal.
“Not particularly any lesson besides the accumulated memories I have on the course, playing different pins with different winds – just course knowledge you grow on and you take back year after year,” said Cabrera Bello when asked about what he had learned that he could benefit from in this year’s tournament.
The former Olympian and Ryder Cup star is looking forward to tackling the new features of the championship course at The Royal Golf Club, which he described as already being “very challenging”.
“I always liked the layout ever since I went there the first time,” he said. “I’m very glad they did an extreme makeover of the greens because I did feel that was needed.
“It’s always a very challenging course – it’s a good course, it’s a fair course.
“There is a little bit of risk and reward, and some par fives are scorable, but you need good shots and it has an exciting finish coming up. Hole 15 is a tough par four, 16 is a tough par three, and then 17 and 18 could very easily be birdie holes but could also be double-bogey holes if you don’t hit a good tee shot.
“I think, like always, it’s going to be a very exciting tournament and hopefully the wind gives us a little break and it’s not blowing too hard, but we do expect wind.”
Prior to competing in the kingdom, Cabrera Bello is playing in this weekend’s Ras Al Khaimah Championship at Al Hamra Golf Club in the UAE, which continues until tomorrow.
“It’s my 20th season as a pro – it’s a special number,” he said. “It was a hard year for me last year. I took some time off, I wanted to clear my head and I wanted to miss golf and get excited about it, try to forget and erase any bad feelings. I feel I’ve done that.
“I’ve worked hard this January and I am still working on things here and there, my swing primarily. I do feel I am swinging better and more consistently.
“This course is a nice one to start the year. It’s not super tough and you normally get low scores so it gives you a little bit of a margin for error. I feel like it is a good test for me.”
Cabrera Bello finished tied-30th in Bahrain in 2011 – 10 shots behind winner Paul Casey of England. Last year, he missed the cut.
Cabrera Bello joins a star-studded cast of 132 players from 29 countries that will be hitting the fairways at The Royal Golf Club for a share of the $2.5milion in total prize money.
Amongst the other big names taking part are defending champion Dylan Frittelli; Major champions Padraig Harrington, Jimmy Walker, and Patrick Reed; Ryder Cup stars Robert Karlsson, Nicolas Colsaerts, Jamie Donaldson, Ross Fisher, and Bernd Wiesberger; and DP World Tour winners Thorbjorn Olesen, Jorge Campillo, John Parry, Johannes Veerman, Elvis Smylie, Laurie Canter and Romain Langasque.
There will also be three Bahrainis competing, including Yaseen Le Falher, who was the leading local in last year’s Bahrain Amateur Open; Ali Al Kowari, the top-ranked Bahraini in last year’s King Hamad Trophy; and Khalifa Duaij Alkaabi, a Bahrain Golf Association qualifier.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
&uuid=(email))