in 2025, Linden made a hole in one at an American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) Adidas All Star event at Pumpking Ridge in Oregon<\/a>. He led going into the final day and finished T-3.<\/p>\n\u201cPlaying in the US is helping me a lot; it\u2019s a little bit of a higher level than here in Australia,\u201d he said. \u201cGetting more experience over there and doing Monday qualifiers to get in junior tournaments is good for me. I\u2019d also like to go to [US] college one day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just need to keep getting that experience under the belt. This year has been, I wouldn\u2019t say the best form, but it\u2019s been a solid year. I\u2019ve been very grateful to go over the US several times and play well at times.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, I had the hole in one in Oregon and a top three finish. Was very happy with that. Another one would be the Australian Junior Age Championships in Queensland, I shot 13-under-par for three rounds and won by more than 20 shots or something.\u201d<\/p>\n
At just 14, Linden has hustled to play regional qualifiers for this NSW Open across the state. He narrowly missed out on several attempts. He was first alternative after losing in a six-man play-off recently and was given an invitation to play this week from Golf NSW.<\/p>\n
He says he\u2019s more excited for the opportunity than nervous. It\u2019s easy to see why. Australian Golf Digest walked several holes with Linden in the pro-am and saw his prodigious driving, iron play and wedge play.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, nerves aren\u2019t too bad, although I probably won\u2019t get as big a crowd out here as the [Drive, Chip and Putt at Augusta],\u201d Linden said, who tees off the 10th at The Vintage at 8.55am in Thursday\u2019s first round alongside Josh Holbrook and Caleb Bovalina. \u201cI know this course well and I\u2019m just thankful to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Linden was even exposed to a nine-hole practice round on Tuesday with defending NSW Open champion, Lucas Herbert. Herbert, who plays on LIV Golf and is a winner across the PGA, DP World and Asian tours, defeated his Ripper GC captain Cam Smith to win last year\u2019s NSW Open.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, that was a pretty cool experience,\u201d Linden said. \u201cI got to have a chat with Lucas about different shots. He is playing at a really high level on LIV Golf. These professional tournaments are about gaining lots of knowledge; see what all the pros do in their processes and practice rounds. See how they prepare.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Photo: Facebook\/Jesse Linden Golf] Jesse Linden may be 14 years of age but teeing up at Augusta National…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-279043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}