When he awoke on Sunday morning, surely the last thing Gary Stal expected — professionally speaking, at least — is that he'd be winning the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship. He was well behind two-time major champion Martin Kaymer, and if Kaymer has shown us anything over the last few years, it's that he knows how to run away with a golf tournament.
Or did, anyway. Kaymer let slip a 10-stroke lead on the field and stumbled home with a final-round 75. Stal, a 22-year-old Frenchman ranked 357th in the world, would end up winning by two shots.
"I can't believe this," Stal said, but he should. This, of course, is the great thing about golf: on any given weekend, a professional player can shoot the rounds of his life, and if the fates help out just a wee bit, there's a victory celebration waiting just past the 18th green.
But who is Gary Stal? What do we know about him? Truth is, since we're not friends or family, not much. This marks his first-ever win on the European Tour. He's a two-time winner on the Challenge Tour, the developmental tour that's the European equivalent to the Web.com. He won both the Kärnten Golf Open and the Credit Suisse Challenge within a five-week span in the summer of 2012, but you probably already knew that. Of note: he won the Kärnten in just his fourth professional start, and the Credit Suisse in a playoff, so the dude knows a thing or two about handling pressure.
While he bounced back and forth between tours for the last couple of years, Stal is now in strong shape thanks to this win. He's now got an exemption into the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, and from there can parlay himself into ever more prestigious fields. Remember the name.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter.
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