Celli European amateur champion: will go to St. Andrews

There will be one more Italian at the next Open Championship in St. Andrews: it’s Filppo Celli, the amateur who won The European Amateur Championship. In Valencia, on the Parador Campo de Golf El Saler course (par 72), he triumphed with a total of 280 strokes (64 74 73 69, -8) overtaking the Danish Rasmus Neergard-Petersen, second with 281 (-7) . In the Top 10 also Pietro Bovari, 7th with a score of 285 (71 66 75 73, -3). Dream victory for the 21-year-old from Rome, who thanks to this affirmation earned him the right to play the 150th edition of The Open Championship, the last male Major of 2022 scheduled on the historic route of the Old Course in St. Andrews (Scotland ), from 14 to 17 July.

And four!

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Celli immediately took the lead at the end of the first round, overtaken in the second by Bovari. Then, on the ‘moving day’, the Roman took back the top of the standings and thanks to a last lap he finished with five birdies and two bogeys. It is the fourth success for Italy in this event after those obtained by Massimo Scarpa in 1992, Stefano Mazzoli in 2015 and Luca Cianchetti (who managed to overcome the competition of the Norwegian Viktor Hovland, now number 8 in the world in the play-off) in 2016. Filippo Celli, thanks to this exploit, managed to register his name in the roll of honor alongside world-class champions such as Sergio Garcia (champion in 1995), Rory McIlroy (who in 2006 established himself in Italy at the Biella Golf Club “Le Betulle”) and the Danish Nicolai Hojgaard (2018), winner of the Italian Open 2021.