Jazz Janewattananond has reached many momentous milestones during his illustrious career and ahead of this week’s US$1.5 million Volvo China Open, being played at Hidden Grace Golf Club, in Shenzhen, he enthusiastically revealed the next one: marriage.
The Thai star will tie the knot with girlfriend and fellow professional golfer Sarina Schmidt next month in Thailand, completing a romance which on occasion has seen her caddie for him – most noticeably when he won last year’s International Series Morocco.
“The big day is on November 22nd!” said the 27-year-old.
“It’s good, it’s the next chapter of my life. I have been growing up, finding myself on the golf course and now I am trying to grow up off the golf course, which is good, everyone has to grow up sometimes.”
The exciting news is just the lift the 27-year-old needs after a torrid second half to the season which has seen him miss 12 successive cuts, the majority of which came on the DP World Tour.
It meant he lost his playing rights on the DP World Tour but as he now turns his attention to playing full-time on the Asian Tour it is with renewed hope and optimism, especially after opting to ditch a swing change.
He said: “I am back playing on the Asian Tour full-time right now. I was struggling a little bit, couldn’t get it back, couldn’t get my confidence. But it has been improving for sure. I have been seeing a lot of improvement. Working hard on what I have been doing well on the practice round so that I can transfer to the golf course.
“I have had some swing problems, some maintenance problems. I was working on the wrong things for a little bit, but I got it back now, I am on the right track. I have gone back to the things I was working on by myself.”
Jazz is a seven-time winner on the Asian Tour – the first of which came at the Bangladesh Open in 2017 – and he also won the Order of Merit in 2019, the year he roared to victory on four occasions.
And after winning in Morocco last November, which was his first success on the Asian Tour in three years, his game appeared to be back on track.
The good form continued this year until his struggles with his swing really became serious in May.
“I was playing well until Japan in April. I had just finished fourth in the International Series Vietnam, then after that I fell off with the swing change. The first month the changes weren’t that bad but then after I never recovered,” he said.
“You know sometimes you think you are going the right way but then you find a big wall and you can’t turn back but now I am going the right way.”
Seven of his wins on the Asian Tour three have been national Opens, as he also won the Singapore and Korea Opens in 2019, so he will have his eye on another when he tees-off on Thursday.
This week marks the first time the Volvo China Open has been played on the Asian Tour since 2019. The tournament returns as part of the blossoming International Series and features a stellar line-up that includes American Andy Ogletree – who leads both the Asian Tour and International Series Order of Merits – Northern Ireland’s Graeme McDowell, Eugenio Chacarra from Spain and Taichi Kho from Hong Kong.
It is the 28th staging of the Volvo China Open, which in 2020 and 2021 was played as a China only tournament when local professionals Huilin Zhang and Jin Zhang triumphed. The event wasn’t held last year.
Both Zhangs are competing this week along with the country’s amateur star Ding Wenyi, who lost the Asian Amateur Championship in a sudden-death play-off in Australia at the weekend.
Ding, winner of the US Junior Amateur last year, has been paired with Jazz for the first two rounds.
