09/09/2026
I spent the weekend in Crans-Montana at the Omega European Masters. My husband loves to volunteer, which is four days on his feet. I love to watch, which is a couple of hours of work from the Airbnb and then the rest of the day wandering from hole to hole. It works out.
If you have never been, the course sits high above the Rhône valley with the Alps stacked up behind it, and on a clear September day it is close to absurd. Sun, thin bright air, the smell of warm pine, and players walking the fairways while the mountains do all the work in the background. I could have watched it all day, and more or less did.
Going into the final round, the man leading the field was Paul Casey, a Brit who lives over in Zug. He had said after Saturday's round that whatever happened on Sunday, all of his prize money would go to Fondation Beloved, the fund for the victims and families of the tragic fire here on New Year's Day that killed 41 people and injured another 115, most of them under the age of 20.
He said it before he knew whether he would win anything worth giving away.
He started Sunday three shots clear. Then Thriston Lawrence, six behind when the day began, went out and shot a 62.
They finished level. It took four extra holes to separate them, all played at the 18th. On three of those both men missed their birdie chances, with dozens of cameras and hundreds of spectators watching. On the fourth, Lawrence nailed it.
Lawrence has won here three times in five years now. The last man to win this one three times was Seve Ballesteros, who redesigned the course and has his name on it.
And Joel Girrbach finished tied for ninth, the best of the Swiss. In that field, on this course, quite something.
What I keep thinking about is how much the two of them seemed to be enjoying it. A title going back and forth between them, and not an ounce of edge in it anywhere. Just two very good players in the sun, going again, and again, and again. The volunteers, four days in and long past done, went with them.
And Casey came second. He paid up anyway. The whole runner-up cheque, a little over USD 400,000. Down in the village there is a wooden pavilion where people have been leaving things since January. Photographs, flowers, candles, teddy bears, paper butterflies. You walk past it on your way up to the golf.
Good on you, Joel. Good on you, Thriston. And good on you, Paul.
