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Martin-Benavides to retain Amateur status

The offers are sure to come flooding in for 20-year-old Spaniard Pablo Martin-Benavides now that he has become the first amateur ever to win a European Tour event.

But the new Portuguese Open champion insists he is going to resist the temptation to cash in on his overnight success immediately.

Martin's brilliant one-shot victory at Oitavos will not change his mind, he says, about going back to Oklahoma State University and continuing to play for them for a few more months.

'I've already thought about it,' he said after achieving a feat that proved beyond even Tiger Woods.

'I've got to play with Oklahoma. They've been giving me so many things and it does not enter my mind to turn pro right now.'

He actually has more than a year of his economics degree to go, but even before this weekend he planned to drop out this summer and start making a living as a golfer then.

By doing that, however, Martin's fully exempt status in Europe will not kick in until next season.
Martin was unable to claim the #141,157 first prize yesterday - it went to runner-up Raphael Jacquelin instead - but the future looks paved with gold for the former British boy's champion, now the world's top-ranked amateur by some distance.

He returns to America today and will at last be able to stop the ribbing he has been receiving from his coach there. In 1985 Scott Verplank became the first amateur to win a US Tour event for 29 years - and he was a student at Oklahoma then.

For all that he had already achieved, including being named the top college player in America, Martin said his coach 'has been giving me crap about that win for three years'.

Since Verplank's Western Open triumph only Phil Mickelson has tasted success on the US Tour before turning professional, at the 1991 Tucson Open, and it had never happened in 1,144 European Tour events.

'It feels great - absolutely great,' added Martin, who had his parents, brother and sister present to witness his brilliant comeback from eight shots behind with 27 holes to play.

He came home in 29 in the third round to be only two strokes back entering the final day, then fired a bogey-free 68 to pip Jacquelin, who had put the pressure on by chipping in on the final hole.

Martin still had two to go at that stage and was aware that two years ago on the same course Barry Lane had led by one and then taken a quintuple-bogey nine at the 18th.

The youngster, however, found the fairway, hit his second 25 feet short of the flag and, after arriving on the green to cheers of "Pablo, Pablo", two-putted for the trophy.

It was just his fifth Tour event, but in the second four years ago he led the Spanish Open on his own with only 17 holes to play.

And only five weeks ago, in his maiden US Tour appearance, he survived the halfway cut in Mexico. Everybody knows he is a special talent.

Martin says he will be glued to the Masters later this week - and no doubt dreaming of the day when he makes his debut there. At his current rate of progress it might even be next year.
In fact, Augusta National have it in their power to invite him to take part this week. But although he will be keeping his mobile phone on hoping for a call, he is not banking on it.

There has been an amateur winner of a professional event in Europe before, Irish doctor David Sheehan at the 1962 Jeyes tournament at Royal Dublin. But that came before the formation of the European Tour, so Martin's name goes down in history.

What he said helped him yesterday was the fact that his two playing partners were Swede Alex Noren and England's Ross McGowan. Noren was an Oklahoma team-mate two years ago and he also knew last year's English amateur champion McGowan well from the college scene in the States.

They were first and second overnight, but fell back badly - both carding 76. Their time might come, but Martin's is here now and he can look forward to be paired with bigger names than them when he next plays on the European Tour. When that is, though, remains to be seen.

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