Player Highlights
It doesn’t look as if Rocha will qualify to compete in the golf competition at the 2016 Summer Olympics in his home country—his countryman Adilson da Silva appears poised to get a berth—but the announcement of Olympic golf re-energized Rocha and turned his career around. He has played around the globe since graduating from Mississippi State University in 2000, no small feat for someone who didn’t speak English when he arrived on campus in Starkville, Miss. In addition to earning a Marketing degree, Rocha, who was a two-time national junior and amateur champion in Brazil, was a first-team All-American for the Bulldogs his senior year.
Rocha is a veteran of a number of tours around the world in addition to the Web.com Tour: European Tour (2006-07 and 2009), Asian Tour (2010) and Canadian Tour (2002-05). His lone victory on PGA TOUR Latinoamérica came in dramatic fashion. At the 2015 Alberto do Brasil presented by Credit Suisse Hedging Griffo, Rocha won a sudden-death playoff that lasted seven holes and nearly two hours, the longest playoff conducted on the Tour. A winner of eight international tournaments from 2000 to 2008, mostly in South America, he earned conditional status for the Web.com Tour in 2016 by finishing T79 at the 2015 Qualifying Tournament. His best result in seven 2016 appearances was T7 at the Club Colombia Championship Presented by Claro.
