Valderrama will be child’s play for new dad Leaney

AUSTRALIA’S Stephen Leaney is delighted to be playing in this week’s Volvo Masters at Valderrama, thanks to his baby son Sebastian.

Leaney, who finished second behind Jim Furyk at the U.S. Open in June, had initially planned to miss the European Tour’s lucrative season-ending event for the top 60 players on the order of merit.

But the 34-year-old Australian was forced to rejig his tournament schedule following the premature birth of his first child on September 19.

“Sebastian was actually due to be born today, but he arrived 5-1/2 weeks early,” Leaney said yesterday.

“I was never playing here and I wasn’t going to play the Match Play (at Wentworth two weeks ago) but instead I missed out on Germany (the German Masters), (the) Dunhill (Links Championship) and the AmEx (WGC-American Express Championship).

“But I would have missed out on anything to see the birth of my child, so it’s all worked out fairly well.”

Leaney is one of 57 players contesting the 16th Volvo Masters at par-72 Valderrama, with world number two Ernie Els, 2001 U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen and Australia’s Peter Lonard the sole absentees from Europe’s top 60.

Els has already clinched the 2003 European order of merit.

Seven-times European number one Colin Montgomerie, who shared last year’s title with Bernhard Langer after they had squared the first two extra holes in gathering gloom, is back to defend, along with six other former winners.

Also teeing off in tomorrow’s first round of an event with a first prize of $690,256 are 2001 winner Padraig Harrington, Miguel Angel Jimenez (1999), Darren Clarke (1998), Lee Westwood (1997), Zimbabwe’s Mark NcNulty (1996) and Englishman Nick Faldo, the inaugural champion in 1988.