30-year-old Mathias Eggenberger wins his first tournament on the Alps Golf Tour in Italy. He did so with a clear lead of five strokes.

The demanding course of Golf Nazionale in Rome seems to suit the Swiss-Liechtenstein double citizen. Last October, he missed a play-off for victory there by an inch. This season Mathias Eggenberger started with a 7th place, after which he missed the last three cuts.

In the Golf Nazionale, he went straight to the top of the leaderboard with a starting round of 67 or five under par. After a solid 71 in the second round, he went into the final with a two-stroke lead. Eggenberger started the final round with a birdie on the first par 5, but he had to let the competition catch up for a while because of two stroke losses directly afterwards. However, in his fifth season as a professional, the 30-year-old did not let himself get nervous. Thanks to a strong finish with a total of 68 strokes in the final round, Eggenberger distanced himself from the competition by five strokes or more with a total of 10 under par.

"I am really happy. It took me a long time, but now the time has finally come," said the winner at the prize giving. "Last year I was very close, but now I'm just happy to have won. I played some really solid golf over the three days and was able to hole some key putts at the end, which is great."

Eggenberger only realised that he had built a comfortable lead on the back nine before the final putt, when his ball was two shots off the green on the par-5 final hole and 1.5 metres off the flag after the first putt. "Before this birdie putt, I looked at the leaderboard for the first time and was reassured to see that I was four shots ahead," he recounts with a laugh. The putt from a critical distance went in, and in the end he even had a lead of 5 strokes over his pursuers.

In the world rankings, his third place at the Swiss Challenge in 2014 was considered his greatest success. As an amateur, there was nothing for Eggenberger to earn at that time. The first victory on the AlpsTour brings a good 5000 euros in prize money and 4 points in the world rankings.

Stefan Waldvogel, article retrieved from www.swissgolf.ch