“It was the perfect storm for me this week”: Stuart Manley claims earning DP World Tour card “means everything”

Welshman Stuart Manley's career has been marked by alternating between the Challenge Tour and the DP World Tour. Playing at the highest level in Europe has never been easy for him and this season was no exception.

Manley finished the 2023 Challenge Tour season ranked 21st on the Road To Mallorca ranking. This means he was awarded the last of the Tour's cards to move up to the next level in 2024.

His promotion was finalized at the Rolex Challenge Tour Grand Final, the final event of the 2023 Challenge Tour season. Stuart Manley didn't have a stellar performance, but things worked out in his favor.

Stuart Manley told The Scotsman:

"It means everything. It was the perfect storm for me this week. Everybody who at the start of the week I didn’t want to see doing well from a selfish perspective were doing well. You could not have scripted it worse from me."

He added:

"I knew by then after that round yesterday [Saturday, November 4] that it was out of my hands. It was in other hands and whatever I shot today wasn’t going to make a massive difference. I was just trying to make a couple of points as it could literally come down to one or two points. I was trying my hardest out there."

Manley finished the Tour Grand Final in T41, giving him 840.64 points. The player who followed him, Brandon Robinson Thompson, almost overtook him but eventually finished T4 in the Grand Final and remained 18 points behind the Welshman in the Road to Mallorca standings.

---

What was Stuart Manley's career like?

Stuart Manley (Image via Getty)

Stuart Manley, 44, started his professional career. Prior to that, he played collegiate golf in the United States on a scholarship from the University of West Florida.

Manley began his career on the Challenge Tour and third-tier circuits such as the PGA EuroPro Tour and the Jamega Pro Golf Tour. He reached the DP World Tour several times but was never able to stabilize at that level.

His first full season at the highest European level was in 2005, after which he had to return to the Challenge Tour. The same happened after the 2008, 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2019 seasons. In fact, Manley has only played on the DP World Tour once in consecutive seasons (2016-2017).

His most significant athletic accomplishments have been his four wins on the Challenge Tour. The first of these came 10 years after he turned professional (2013 Finnish Challenge, 2018 Hauts de France Golf, 2021 Euram Bank Open and 2023 Blot Open de Bretagne).

Manley has three other professional wins, the 2012 Eagle Orchid Scottish Masters (PGA EuroPro Tour), the 2013 Burnham & Berrow (Jamega Pro Golf Tour) and the 2012 Welsh National PGA Championship.