Jasper Stubbs has Augusta National and the 2024 Masters on his horizon after an epic Asia-Pacific Amateur victory
It’d be pretty cool to stay in the Crow’s Nest, but from what I hear, it’s just four beds in a small room. I’d definitely like to experience it one night, though.
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Golf began for me at Bairnsdale Golf Club. Dad would take me, my younger sister and my older brother to junior clinics that would run every Saturday. My first handicap was 36 when I was 9. I couldn’t really finish 18 holes, but I just wanted a handicap.
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Growing up in the country, I played just about every other sport at school. We played basketball, footy and cricket – just whatever season it was. I played heaps of sports, but golf was the one that I felt I was pretty good at.
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Having my other family members playing was pretty cool. By the time we all had a handicap, we were playing ambrose and things around the club and winning them. The club wasn’t too happy with us, but it just felt like a lot of fun at the time.
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When I started coming up for tournaments in Melbourne, travelling back and forth, that was when I started to realise that I’m pretty close to being as good as these guys. My first Junior Interstate Series, I was picked as a development player when I was 14. When you get picked for that sort of thing, so young, you get to experience it with the older guys and learn a little bit. Watching all the best guys in Australia was pretty cool, being a 14-year-old kid from Bairnsdale.
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There was one year when I was 16 when I wasn’t playing my best but by the end of that year, I’d won the Junior Vic Open and got a start in the Vic Open from that. By the end of that year I’d jumped up another level and that hard work started to pay off.
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There’s a lot of people that have helped me along the way at different points in time. I remember being in the Rowville Sports Academy and all the other golfers would push you along. I’ve been with my coach, Tim Wendel, for almost 10 years now and he’s been such a critical part of my progression.
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I always enjoyed watching the guys on TV and thinking, I really want to do that. It wasn’t really until I started winning a couple of those really big, state-level amateur events and then playing in the Vic Open that I thought about possibly becoming a pro golfer. It was just a taste of what I wanted to do.
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The goal was always to win. I sat down with my team maybe nine months ago and said that it was a goal of mine to win the Asia-Pacific Amateur. Goals don’t always come off, but this time it did.
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Even though I was six shots behind going into Sunday, I was always hoping that I could still win. It wasn’t really until I got around to the 16th hole and I saw a leaderboard that I realised I was three behind. I had a good birdie putt on 16 and I thought I’d have to make that, and then birdie 17 to have a chance of winning. By the time I putted out on the 18th hole, I was tied for the lead. It wasn’t really until I got around to 16 that I thought I had a chance – a proper chance – to win on the day.
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To have Wenyi Ding make that putt on top of me at the first playoff hole was nuts. That’s the putt that you dream of holing to book a trip to the Masters or to win the Masters and I felt that was my putt to make an impact on my dreams and my life, I guess. I had to go back to zero pretty quick because I had to go back down the fairway and do it all again.
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My earliest and probably best memory of the Masters was my mum calling up Gippsland Grammar School to get one of the receptionists to come into my classroom and tell me that Adam Scott had just won in 2013 in a playoff. She walked in and said, “Jasper, your mum’s just called up and she’d like to let you know that Adam Scott’s just won the Masters.” She just said it in front of the whole class.
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If I win the Masters one day, I don’t know what I’d serve for an entrée at the Champions Dinner. We don’t really do entrées at my place. My main would be my dad’s lamb chop casserole – I’m going home-grown meals here – and then my dessert would have to be an ‘Impossible Pie’. I have no idea what’s in it, but it comes out of a recipe book that has been passed down from a golf club in Castlemaine through my family. So that’d be my main and my dessert. I’d have to think on the entrée, though.
Image Courtesy Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship
