The closing stretch made the difference. With the tournament still within reach for others, Baker separated himself in emphatic fashion, turning a tight contest into a statement win over the final five holes.<\/p>\n
Baker, currently No. 16 in the Golfweek AmateurGolf.com World Rankings, continues a strong run of form. He finished T4 at the 2024 Brabazon Trophy, reached the final 64 at the 2024 British Amateur, and added a T6 at the Tillman Trophy.<\/p>\n
Scott Woltering of the Netherlands registered a runner-up finish at 12-under 276 with rounds of 67-68-70-71.<\/p>\n
Ben Bolton (England) finished third at 11-under 277 (68-68-71-70), adding another strong performance for the English side. Defending champion Kevin Jegers (Estonia), a Middle Tennessee State graduate, finished T-14 at 1-under 287 (77-67-69-74).<\/p>\n
The week belonged to England across the board.<\/p>\n
Led by Baker, along with Bolton, Tom Osborne, and Kris Kim, England completed a wire-to-wire win in the team competition at 31-under. They posted the low team score on three of the four days and cruised to a 14-shot victory.<\/p>\n
It marks England\u2019s 14th European Nations Cup title, extending a dominant record that now puts them well clear of Spain, the next closest nation with four wins.<\/p>\n
A dominant team performance\u2014and a closing stretch from Baker that no one could match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The closing stretch made the difference. With the tournament still within reach for others, Baker separated himself in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[139313,139312,748,393,254487,4884,254488,254489,254491,254490,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-904497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-amateur-golf-news","9":"tag-amateurgolf-com","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-european-nations-cup-copa-sotogrande","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-real-club-de-golf-sotogrande","15":"tag-sotogrande-golf-tournaments","16":"tag-sotogrande-spain-golf","17":"tag-spain-golf-tournaments","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116430636829973499","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}