Kristoffer Reitan was once talked about in the same breath with countryman Viktor Hovland.
Now, six years into his professional career, the 26-year-old Norwegian has his first world-ranked victory – and a return trip to the DP World Tour.
Reitan captured the Rolex Challenge Tour Grand Final on Sunday by a shot over Denmark’s Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, who missed a 3-footer on his final hole but still ended as the winner of the season-long Road to Mallorca points race.
“I got a little bit of a gift there,” said Reitan, who missed a short putt of his own at Alcanada Golf Club’s par-4 finishing hole before Neegaard-Petersen, a former standout at Oklahoma State, lipped out the playoff-forcer.
Reitan, who needed to finish third or better in this week’s 46-man field to graduate from the Challenge Tour, jumped 29 spots to seventh in the final points standings, earning full DPWT membership for the first time since he got through Q-School in 2018, just months after turning pro.
“Got my main goal done of getting back to the European Tour – and through a whole season as well, not just through Q-School, even though that’s also a great achievement,” Reitan added. “But I did it the hard way this time and it was really, really nice to be able to play well when it mattered the most.”
Reitan was a highly regarded junior player out of Lorenskog when he advanced to the quarterfinals of the 2015 U.S. Junior Amateur. Reitan, who had Hovland on his bag after Hovland bowed out in the Round of 64 that week, would lose to eventual champion Philip Barbaree. Shortly after his U.S. Junior run, Reitan verbally committed to the University of Texas, set to follow Oklahoma State standouts Hovland and Kristoffer Ventura – who were a year and three years older than Reitan, respectively – to the Big 12 beginning in Fall 2017. But despite signing with the Longhorns, Reitan, as a top-40 amateur in the world at the time, changed his mind a few months before enrolling and instead opted to eschew college golf.
“I just felt like I was in a place where my level (of golf) was getting better and another four years of amateur golf wasn’t as exciting to me as it probably should’ve been,” Reitan said in 2017.
Reitan’s final accomplishment as an amateur came at the 2018 U.S. Open, where he became the first Norway-born player ever to compete in the championship.
But Reitan has been stuck in neutral in recent years after a disappointing debut season on the DPWT in 2019. He cobbled together starts all over the globe for a few years until landing full-time on the Challenge Tour this year. He then missed five of his first six starts of the year, though the lone weekend during that stretch resulted in a solo third.
Reitan turned a corner in early September and entered the Challenge Tour’s finale having cracked the top 20 in five straight tournaments. He opened the week in Mallorce with rounds of 65-64 and then entered Sunday’s final round in the penultimate group and four shots back of Neegaard-Petersen, another Oklahoma State product, who had maintained his four-shot lead through 11 holes only to bogey three of his final seven holes.
Neergaard-Petersen and England’s Robin Williams had already earned DPWT membership for their performances on the main tour this year, so Neegaard-Petersen’s Challenge Tour finish was gravy. England’s John Parry, Finland’s Oliver Lindell, Spain’s Angel Ayora and Denmark’s Hamish Brown rounded out the top five in final points.
Other notables graduating to the DPWT include Reitan, Ireland’s Conor Purcell, England’s Jack Senior and Brandon Robinson-Thompson, France’s Alexander Levy and Benjamin Hebert, South Africa’s Deon Germishuys, and Denmark’s Lucas Bjerregaard, who finished No. 22 in points but earned the final card since Neergaard-Petersen and Williams qualify for the DPWT via another category.
“It’s just bizarre,” Reitan said. “I never thought that this would be a possibility like a year ago, or even just a few months ago. … I’m looking forward to [returning to the DPWT] immensely. I’m really happy to be back.”