Matt

Jager

Despite his lowly ranking, Jager was T19 at the Aussie PGA at Royal Pines in early December and popped up on the leaderboard at last week’s ISPS Handa Vic Open after opening with a pair of 66s. It looked good for a weekend challenge before he crashed to an 81 in Saturday’s poor weather and missed a second, 54-hole cut. After rounds of 69-68 here he’ll get another crack at a big week and today he handed in a clean card of 14 pars and birdies at 3, 4, 7 and 15. Three of those were at par 5s. Jager now has to stay inside the top 24 who’ll qualify for Sunday’s matchplay section. If he can retain his place inside the top eight, he’ll get a bye to the last 16.

The 2000 Australian Amateur champion has struggled to transfer promise into results in the professional ranks. But in addition to this week’s hope, he can look at the list of his best performances in the world rankings. His second best rated effort was T28 in last November’s Australian Open and his best was when T13 in this event last year. Those results do also point out what little he has achieved. For ten holes on Friday he was supreme, flashing four front nine birdies and adding an eagle-3 at the tenth. He would add a pair of red numbers at the 13th and 14th, but errors at the 11th and 18th meant that although he briefly led the tournament, he reverted to trailing heading into the final 36 holes.

The Aussie heads into the weekend at the RACV Royal Pines Resort in Surfer’s Paradise, Queensland just two swings back of Cameron Smith’s lead and therefore with plenty of hope for a ground-breaking result, but he had to dig deep for it. The two eagle-3s which he chalked up in the first nine of his week’s activity were a huge boost, but since then he has had diminishing returns. His second nine on Thursday was 2-under, he then played the front nine again on Friday morning, opened with bogey, but responded with a pair of birdies: from 4-under to 2-under to 1-under. And the unfortunate slide continued when he made one birdie and one bogey on the back nine for a level-par nine. A tough trend he will hope to address at the weekend.

A celebrated amateur who completed the unusual double of winning both the Australian and New Zealand Amateur titles, Jager turned pro in 2010 and it’s not quite happened since, as he has toiled on the home circuit, with ventures to Canada and China. His record in ET events is an uninspiring 0-for-5 but he should change that this week and he had a sensational start, making eagle-3s on the 12th and 15th (he played the back nine first). There were three birdies and a bogey on the way home. “The eagles were a bonus obviously, but in saying that, just made some really nice swings,” he said. “Got in position and just rolled a couple of putts in. There were lots of 12, 15, 20 footers that I had as well that just sort of slid by out there. I was giving myself lots of chances and I was lucky enough to roll those ones in on the par fives when it counted most.”