David GonzalezAt the Le Vaudreuil Golf Challenge, where birdies bloom like spring lavender and double bogeys lurk like rusted Renaults, it was a 40-year-old Englishman who rolled back the years—and nerves—to claim a long-awaited return to the winner’s circle.
David Horsey, once a familiar figure atop European leaderboards, emerged victorious from a nail-gnawing four-man play-off at Golf PGA France du Vaudreuil to clinch his first title in nearly a decade.
After calmly draining a birdie putt at the 72nd hole to force extra holes, he needed just one more act of brilliance—an iron-struck dart to within three feet at the par-three tenth—to seal the win and shake off years of pain, injury, and second-guessing.
“It’s good to get it over the line,” Horsey said, sounding as relieved as he was triumphant. “It’s been a tough road the last four or five years.”
Tough? Try tour purgatory. Horsey’s been playing well in flashes—single-round sizzlers with no Sunday substance—but at Le Vaudreuil Golf Challenge, he finally pieced together four rounds of the kind of golf that made him a four-time DP World Tour champion.
The win catapulted him 97 places up the Road to Mallorca Rankings to 12th, reigniting hopes of a return to golf’s top table.
“I’ve had a few injuries and I haven’t been playing very well,” he admitted. “To put four rounds together and win a tournament is very pleasing… To see everything hold up under pressure was great.”
He wasn’t kidding about the pressure. Horsey began Sunday tied for the lead, grabbed it outright with a long-range birdie bomb on the first, then held his nerve through a rollercoaster back nine: three straight birdies from the 10th, a stumble at 14, a swift recovery at 15, and a costly double bogey at 17 that seemed to throw it all away. But he punched back with a clutch birdie at 18 to book his place in a play-off alongside fellow Brit James Allan, Spain’s Joseba Torres, and Scotland’s Daniel Young.
Cue the five-iron of dreams.
“Hitting a great shot like that into the first play-off hole is very pleasing,” Horsey said. “It came out perfectly and a little bit of wind off the right helped it come back to three or four feet, and I managed to hole it.”
Classic understatement. It was the kind of shot that writes its own footnote in a comeback tale ten years in the making.
Elsewhere on the leaderboard, Swede Albin Bergstrom finished solo fifth at 15-under-par, with France’s Robin Sciot-Siegrist—still chasing redemption after his near-miss three years ago—a shot back in sixth.
American Nick Carlson rounded out the top seven at 13-under, while Eddie Pepperell, who had co-led overnight, withdrew before Sunday’s round citing a back injury. Unfortunate, but not unusual in a game where one wrong twist can undo months of work.
The Le Vaudreuil Golf Challenge also stirred up the rankings: Daniel Young climbed 20 places to sixth with his T2 finish, and France’s Clement Charmasson nudged into ninth after a steady eighth-place showing.
But the top spot remains with Italy’s Renato Paratore, whose Mallorca ambitions still look safe—for now.
Next stop for the HotelPlanner Tour: the Interwetten Open in Austria from June 3–6. But this week belonged to Horsey—a comeback built not on fireworks, but on patience, persistence, and a perfectly struck five-iron that landed like a feather and roared like a lion.
