Hart Leads Federal Am
BY Anthony Powter | Australian Mens Amateur Tour | 2011 Federal Amateur Open Championship | Round One | 05 Mar 2011
Tim Hart is no stranger to leading main amateur events and the 22-year-old Queenslander made another jump on the field following the first round of the Federal Amateur in Canberra.
Hart was the only player to record a sub-par opening round with a 3-under-par, 69, to be three strokes ahead of Darren Baxter and Landyn Edwards. Dale Brant-Richards is in outright 4th position at 1-over-par, followed by Brendan Lee and Kyle Grant in a tie for 5th position at 2-over-par. British Amateur champion, Jin Jeong opened with a disastrous 6-over-par, 78, to be currently in a tie for 20th position.
Hart has been runner-up on numbers occasions in main Australian amateur events to a degree where he’s become the perennial ‘bridesmaid’ of Australian men’s amateur golf. His ‘close, but no cigar’ efforts range with runner-up finishes at the 2009 Mandurah Easter Amateur, the 2008 NSW Amateur Championship, the 2009 Federal Amateur, 2009 Victorian Amateur, 2010 Queensland Amateur and the 2010 Port Phillip Amateur.
He’s certainly due a win and Hart’s opening round in Canberra sets the stage to provide another chance to collect a title. Much will depend upon how well he can handle the pressure and close out this tournament.
The Federal Amateur was last played two years ago and has gone through an intervening period of dislocation, a result that was more associated with the politics within amateur sport than anything else. The tournament lost its National Trial status in the process over what you might call trivial issues with Golf Australia dealing with the event’s timing and where it was to be positioned on the golfing calendar. The Federal Amateur was also damaged by some poor presentation of the course in recent times under challenging conditions where the drought of the 2008-9 hammered the otherwise quant and testing Red Hill layout.
Matt Jager secured his second consecutive Federal Amateur title when the event was last played in October 2009. Jager was Australia’s top ranked amateur at the time and fired a closing round 4-under-par, 68, for a 12-under-par score, two strokes ahead of Hart.
Hart had led the tournament for the previous three rounds and Jager’s white hot putter over the last day’s round sniffed another potential victory from Hart. This weekend Hart will have the chance to prove that he can get it across the line and collect that desired ‘W’.
Hart’s form leading into the Federal Amateur has been patchy with average results at the Master of the Amateurs (T24th), the Lake Macquarie Amateur (T20th), although there were signs of promise with solid efforts at the NSW Amateur championship where he made it through to the top-16, after qualifying the 12th seed, as well as his runner-up finish at the Port Phillip Amateur.
It might be early days at the Federal Amateur and there is plenty of golf left to play before the winner come Monday afternoon holds the crystal ware, yet Hart again is making his move on a main amateur tournament.
He’s creating his chances, which is what you need to do and should he be in the hunt on the final day, Hart is accustomed to the pressures and in this case you would hope that he’d be able to get the job finally done for that main victory on home soil.
