Max

Schmitt

Schmitt, who turns 23 in May, opened with rounds of 66-69-66 before stumbling to a 1-over 71 last Sunday in Spain. The three-year European Tour veteran missed his first two cuts in Kenya to start the season, but he has since rebounded by making two straight, including a T-33 finish at the Austrian Golf Open. Last season, Schmitt made six cuts in 10 events and finished on a high note by making four consecutive cuts to end the season. He fired four sub-par rounds in his last start of 2020 to finish T-13 at the Golf in Dubai Championship in December. However, Schmitt hasn’t cracked the top 10 at an event since 2019 when he finished T-4 in Denmark and T-7 at Mauritius.

A third tournament start and second at Golfclub Munich Eichenried for the young German who is born and bred in Hamburg (he was T59 in 2017). He managed six birdies in the first lap but also tossed three shots away. In eradicating the latter on Friday he could afford to post just the four birdies and shoot a better score. He started on the back nine and for the second day running he ticked the 11th and 13th. He then opened and closed the front nine with red numbers to join Lee Westwood and Edoardo Molinari in that tie for third, one behind second placed Kim Koivu. Schmitt will seek at the weekend to grab a third European Tour top ten of his career and season after his career best T4 at the Made in Denmark.

A European Tour best for the youngster and a valuable one too. It vaults him to 94th in the Race to Dubai, boosts his confidence and gives him a good chance of retaining his card without the pressure that was building ahead of this week. A card winner at Q School after he made just one top ten on his first crack at the Challenge Tour last year, he opened 2019 with T7 in the Mautius Open but had gone 3-for-7 since then without returning to the top 25. His Sunday morning front nine was something of a rollercoaster. He lost his stomach when dropping bogeys at the first and fourth, making two pars in between. But his spirits rose with four consecutive birdies thereafter. He then added eight pars and a bogey-birdie exchange at the 15th and 16th. He ended the week five shots behind the winner Bernd Wiesberger.

The Q School grad started fast today with birdies at the opening two holes and responded to a dropped shot at 3 with another par breaker at 5. The wild ride continued with a bogey at the par-3 6th hole before he played out his front nine with a trio of pars. Schmitt was a combined 1-over for the week on the back nine heading into the weekend but today he eliminated the mistakes, collected seven pars along with birdies at 12 and 14 and ended the day up from tied seventh to tied third. The World No. 737 now has a genuine shot at becoming a European Tour winner on just his 14th start at this level.

On the live board, that’s nudged him up five spots to tied seventh and four adrift of leader Matthias Schwab. The 21-year-old started strongly with birdies at 4, 5 and 7 but wobbled after that and gave all those shots back via a bogey at 9 and a double at the par-4 13th. To his credit, he registered a bounceback birdie at 14 and closed with four pars to keep himself in the picture for the weekend action.

What’s more, the German youngster did it on the tougher of the two courses, Firethorn. A look at the leaderboard right now shows that 17 of the top 21, including leader Louis Oosthuizen (9-under), started at the Bushwillow today. Schmitt has the best completed score at Firethorn alongside Jake Roos so he has a great chance to kick on in Friday’s second round before returning to the Firethorn for 36 holes on the weekend. Making just his fifth European Tour start and first in South Africa, the 20-year-old outpaced a long bogey with six birdies with five of his red numbers coming at par 4s. After a top ten last week, he’s a new name we should keep a close eye on.