On the morning of the day on which Stephan Jäger would reach the peak of his career, he followed a usual ritual. In a side compartment of his golf bag he has stored three so-called ball markers, small coin-sized chips that you place on the green in place of the ball in order to be able to pick it up so that it doesn’t get in the way of other players. His wife Shelby designed these ball markers herself; before each round, Jäger randomly selects one: one should remind him of his dog Phil, one of his 16-month-old son Fritz. And one to his father Klaus, who died in March 2022.
“This morning I pulled the one with Papa Klaus out of the bag and had to smile because I knew it would be a good omen,” said Jäger later on the press podium at the Memorial Park Golf Club near Houston, Texas – as the fourth German Winner on the PGA Tour after Bernhard Langer, Martin Kaymer and Alex Cejka. The trophy he had worked towards for so long stood next to him.
The 34-year-old played 135 tournaments in his career on the PGA Tour, the highest golf league, which was not always his home. Jäger has been promoted, relegated, promoted again, experienced low points, fought his way back and now ended up at this special point in his career where things suddenly turned his way. On the final hole, for example, when the world number one Scottie Scheffler, who is currently considered almost unbeatable, pushed a putt past from short distance and thus gave Jäger the victory.
The pitches are longer than before – that became a problem for Stephan Jäger
They both competed at the highest level for two days. “It was fun taming the dragon this week,” said Jäger about the duel in which he didn’t let himself be defeated and showed his considerable new qualities. About two years ago, Jäger realized that the reason why he didn’t win a tournament on the PGA Tour didn’t just have to do with luck and bad luck – but with himself. Until then, Jäger was considered a solid player him one Grindera hard worker, but: He couldn’t hit the ball particularly far, which became a problem on increasingly longer courses in professional golf.
Several hours in the gym and on the practice range later, the 1.75 meter tall hunter is one of the longest players on the entire tour – when it comes to the tee shot: one after the other flew past Scheffler’s ball. Jäger now has more control over his game and more self-confidence. And yet that is only the sporting side of success.
In Eichenried he grew up next to the golf course
It took 135 tournaments for Jäger to win, but above all many years of growing up as a sport. His wife, Shelby, has been with him since 2015, when he had just finished his season on the Latin American golf tour and earned about $12,000. “She went through everything with me,” said Jäger when he was supposed to briefly tell his story at the press conference for the US audience, who don’t know the German, even though he has lived in Tennessee for 16 years and speaks English in a southern accent speaks, although Bavarian rarely comes through.
So Jäger remembered his childhood in Eichenried, where he grew up next to the golf club. About the golf vacations with his parents and sister and how he and coach Ken Williams discovered his considerable golf talent. The $1.6 million he won in Texas is not what motivates Jäger: He loves the competition itself, but for a long time he says he took it too seriously.
“I always used to take bad laps home with me in my head,” says Jäger. Things are different now, with little Fritz at home, who also made his contribution to the long-awaited first victory because he changed Jäger’s attitude towards his life as an athlete: “I just noticed that he will love me, regardless of whether I am a successful golfer am or a carpenter.”
Jäger is now pursuing other big goals: in two weeks he will play at the Masters in Augusta for the first time in his career; his long-term goal is the Ryder Cup in autumn 2025, which has now become a lot more realistic. Above all, Jäger wants to win more tournaments in the coming years, when his son Fritz is a little older and notices more than this time, when his dad put him in the winner’s cup: “I would like him to remember that at some point “Dad was really good at something.”