Costantino Rocca
| Costantino Rocca | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Personal information | |
| Full name | Costantino Rocca |
| Born |
4 December 1956 Bergamo, Italy |
| Height | 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in) |
| Nationality |
 Italy
|
| Residence | Bergamo, Italy |
| Spouse | Antonella (m. 1981) |
| Children | Chiara, Francesco |
| Career | |
| Turned professional | 1981 |
| Current tour(s) | European Seniors Tour |
| Former tour(s) | European Tour |
| Professional wins | 17 |
| Number of wins by tour | |
| European Tour | 5 |
| European Senior Tour | 2 |
| Other | 10 |
| Best results in major championships |
|
| Masters Tournament | T5: 1997 |
| U.S. Open | T67: 1996 |
| The Open Championship | 2nd: 1995 |
| PGA Championship | T17: 1995 |
Costantino Rocca (born 4 December 1956) is the most successful male golfer that Italy has produced. After a long career on the European Tour he is now playing on the European Seniors Tour. He has five European Tour wins and is best known for his second-place finish in the 1995 Open Championship.
Rocca was born in Almenno San Bartolomeo, Bergamo. He started out as a caddy, winning the Italian Caddie Championship in 1978, and turned professional in 1981 at the age of 24.
In the 1980s, Rocca struggled to retain a European Tour card and made several trips to the Qualifying School. He began to make major strides in his career in 1990, which was the first season that he finished high enough on the Order of Merit to gain a tour card automatically. By 1993, he had risen to sixth in the Order of Merit, and his two best seasons were 1995 and 1996, when he finished fourth. He won five titles on the tour, the first of which was the 1993 Open de Lyon and the most prestigious of which was the 1996 Volvo PGA Championship.
In the final round of the 1995 Open Championship, Rocca sank a 60-foot (18-metre) putt on the 18th at St Andrews to make birdie and force a four-hole playoff with John Daly, but Daly won the playoff by four strokes. Rocca's second-highest finish in a major was a tie for fifth in the 1997 Masters Tournament; he was in the final pairing on Sunday, having begun the final round in second place, nine shots behind 21-year-old Tiger Woods, and he finished fifteen behind Woods.
Rocca was the first Italian to play for Europe in the Ryder Cup, and remained the only Italian to do so until 2010, when Francesco Molinari qualified for the Ryder Cup held in Celtic Manor and Edoardo Molinari was a captain's pick. He appeared in 1993, 1995 and 1997, and had a 6-5-0 win-loss-half record, including 1 win and 2 losses in singles matches. That one singles win came in a crucial match against Tiger Woods in the 1997 Ryder Cup at Valderrama, which Rocca won 4 & 2 to help Europe claim the cup. The victory against Woods was one of Woods' first losses in singles play. His 53% winning record in the Cup is one of the best in European team history. During the 1995 Ryder Cup, Rocca made a hole-in-one on Oak Hill's sixth hole, only the third ace in Ryder Cup history. In 1999, Rocca almost qualified for the Cup again after he won the West of Ireland Golf Classic.
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