The Phenom returns
Second Act: How Matteo Manassero's game went from riches to rags to riches again
WENTWORTH, England — There is something intriguing about Matteo Manassero contending after the opening round of the DP World Tour’s BMW PGA Championship, a five-under 67 leaving him tied for fourth, two strokes off the lead. It was at the Wentworth Course, 11 years earlier, that the first act of the 31-year-old’s professional career peaked. And here this week is when his second act might reach its own compelling milestone.
At the 2013 BMW PGA, a then 19-year-old Manassero left the likes of Ernie Els, Lee Westwood, Darren Clarke, Francesco Molinari and Colin Montgomerie in his wake, winning the flagship event on what was then called the European Tour and moving into the top 25 in the World Ranking. None of which came as any surprise. At age 16 in 2009, Manassero became the youngest ever winner of the British Amateur. One month later, he claimed the Silver Medal awarded to the leading amateur in the Open Championship at Turnberry. Finishing T-13, the teenager was just four shots distant from the playoff between Stewart Cink and Tom Watson. By the end of that year, Manassero was ranked the No. 1 amateur on the planet.
At the 2010 Masters, Manassero made the cut, at the time the youngest to ever to do so. A week later he turned professional and six months after that he won his first European Tour title. Shocking no one yet again, he was the Old World circuit’s “rookie of the year.”
But after the victory at Wentworth, his fourth on the Euro Tour while still just a teenager, the skyrocketing career suddenly came to a halt, with a startling freefall to follow.
“The problem was that, when I got to the top 30 in the world, I wanted to improve the things I felt I had to improve if I was to get into the top 20,” Manassero says. “For me, that was more distance. I wanted to get closer to the greens.”
Manassero's claimed his fourth career European Tour win at age 19 with his victory at the 2013 BMW PGA Championship. But then his career went into a tailspin.
Richard Heathcote
The decline when it came was precipitous. In 2014, Manassero recorded just one top-10 finish on the European Tour. A year after that he made only six cuts in 22 starts, finishing 167th on the Order of Merit. By the end of 2018 Manassero was no longer a European Tour player.
“Golf is a big part of my life,” he continues. “And I did feel down. I struggled to get joy and happiness from something that had always given me joy and happiness. So I had to find it somewhere else in life. I had to realize that I was not only about golf. And I really started to learn that when I met my girlfriend, now my wife. She taught me that there was something for me outside of golf.”
Still, back “inside” the game, by 2020 the lad from Verona wasn’t even good enough to merit a place on the second-tier Challenge Tour. So that year he played on European golf’s third division, the Alps Tour. And it was there that progress began. In September that year, ranked an all-time low of 1,805th on the World Ranking, Manassero won the Toscana Alps Open, which helped send him back to the Challenge circuit. There, in 2023, he won twice, at the Copenhagen Challenge and the Italian Challenge Open.
“When my game declined, I found it very difficult mentally,” he admits. “I had expectations of myself that did not involve any downside. So yes, it was difficult to handle. The good thing was that I was young enough to have the time to turn things around. If it had all happened when I was 35 or so, it might have been different. But I was so young. I had time to do bad things on the golf course. I had time to make changes and decisions.”
Back on the DP World Tour this year, Manassero claimed the Jonsson Workwear Open in South Africa, completing his return to top-level golf. Hang on though. There might be more to come. Before teeing it up this week at Wentworth, Manassero ranked sixth on the DP World Tour’s list of 10 players who will earn PGA Tour cards at the end of this season. That would climax what has already been an amazing return to form.
“I am only in contention for a PGA Tour card,” says Manassero, not wanting to tempt fate by thinking his status is secure. “I feel excited by that. But I also feel that is a lot of golf still to play. Still, if you had told me at the start of the year that I would be sixth in the rankings in September, I would know that I had already played a lot of good golf. So the aim now is to finish playing as well as I have done until now. It would be another door unlocked on my journey.
“I am surprised by how far I have come in only four years,” he continues. “Before, I knew nothing but success. Now I understand how difficult winning is. And I understand how difficult it is to get from the Challenge Tour to where I am now.”
Photo by Walter Iooss Jr., May 2011
Indeed, Manassero, up to 101st in the latest World Ranking, is clearly a more mature figure than the slightly built young lad who took the game by storm back in the day. By now, there isn’t much he hasn’t seen in the game—good and bad.
“I’m more experienced of course,” he says. “A lot of things have happened. I’ve learned a lot about golf and a lot about life. A lot of good things, to be honest, alongside some tough things in golf. But overall, I’m more mature. I have a better perspective on the game. I’m not sure how I compare as a player. I was a good player in 2013 and I’m a good player in 2024.
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But a different in ways. Manassero says he hits the ball higher than in his younger days. “I have a little bit more speed. I’ve gained the things that I was trying to gain when I started to play a little bit worse. I’m stronger than back then. So there are things that are better, but I was playing really well back then so it is hard to compare results-wise. I’m just happy to be back with a good perspective and a good attitude to the work that I do day in and day out.”
That daily toil has involved much work on his technique, his body and his mind. And some of the credit—alongside the work he has done with swing coaches James Rudyard and Soren Hansen, and mind coach Alessandra Averna—must ironically go to the COVID pandemic. When the world stopped, Manassero was afforded the time to make the necessary changes at his own pace, free from any disappointments that tournament golf may have thrown his way.
“COVID froze time for me,” he says. “I was able to build a big sound base for my game. But I did play the occasional event in order to challenge myself. And I was trending in the right direction with the work I was doing. It was steady. My work was good, and I was unlocking things on the course. I got my card only after three years on the Challenge Tour. So it wasn’t straight away. I’m glad about that. Good golf doesn’t happen all of a sudden. My mind needed to know I was taking small steps and moving up gradually.”
Which brings us up to date and one last thought. What advice would today’s Matteo give his 19-year-old self, knowing what he knows now?
“I would tell the 2013 Matteo to get his focus away from results,” he says with a smile. “I would tell him to enjoy the journey, the improving journey. If you focus too much on results you are never happy. When you win, OK, that is what you are supposed to. But when things are going bad there is nothing you can do right, if you focus only on results. They are important and are how we are judged in the end. But they are merely a consequence.”
Second time round, it sounds like he’s got things figured out.