Scott Jamieson will commute to European Tour from Florida
Scott Jamieson, one of five Scots involved in this season’s Final Series, which starts today with the Turkish Airlines Open in Belek, will be plotting his next European Tour campaign from the other side of the Atlantic.
The 33-year-old is moving to Florida in December with his American wife, Natalie, and their two young children, Zoey and Oscar, and will commute from there as he continues to play a normal schedule on his home circuit.
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Hide Ad“We’re going to be living in Ponte Vedra Beach, where Sawgrass [venue for the Players Championship] is,” revealed Jamieson as he took a break from preparing for this week’s $7 million event at the Regnum Carya resort in Belek.
“We put the deposit down the week before Wentworth [the BMW PGA Championship] in May, but it’s something we’ve been looking at for probably a couple of years. It’s closer to Natalie’s family. Her sister has two young kids similar to ours, so life will be a bit easier over there from a family perspective.
“I’ll still be playing on the European Tour, though, as I’m not employed anywhere else. The travelling won’t be much different. For seven months a year, we are on long haul anyway. My schedule will probably be a more structured at the start of the year, though where I’ll start next year depends on how I do the next few weeks. If I get into to Dubai, I won’t start until Abu Dhabi. If I don’t, I might play somewhere in December when I’m still in the UK.”
While the likes of Russell Knox and Martin Laird are both based in the US, of course, Jamieson will be the first Scot to be living over there at the same time as playing on the European Tour rather than the PGA Tour. He doesn’t see that as being a problem, though.
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Hide Ad“You can live where you want really when you’re on the Tour,” insisted Jamieson. “There are guys who live in America who play the European Tour, there are guys that live in Dubai and the Aussie boys will travel more than I will. The only thing that will be different will be that I’ll sit on the plane a little bit longer, but probably will take fewer flights. I guess the jet lag will be something I’ll need to learn how to live with, but we do that anyway in this job.”
Jamieson is no stranger to the US, having had a spell at Augusta State, and he is confident the move will improve his chances of adding to a solitary European Tour triumph in the 2013 Nelson Mandela Championship in South Africa.
“I like it over there, and I’ve got friends over there from college days,” he added. “There are a lot of golfers in and around the Jacksonville area as well. A lot of the PGA Tour and web.com guys are based there.
“It should be good for my golf. I will practise more in good weather and be on the golf course more than I do at the moment at home, that’s for sure. You don’t get much chance to practise chipping and putting in Scotland unless you are doing some indoor stuff.”
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Hide AdAs well as where he is about to live, Jamieson has also just changed management companies. Along with the likes of Lee Westwood and Danny Willett, he’s left ISM, the company run by Chubby Chandler, to join his big pal, Marc Warren, at Octagon.
Jamieson, who is joined in this week’s field by Warren, Richie Ramsay, David Drysdale and Stephen Gallacher, is 71st in the Race to Dubai after tying for sixth behind Sergio Garcia in the recent Andalucia Valderrama Masters.
He took a lot of confidence from that performance on one of the toughest circuits on the European Tour. “I played really well there, especially tee to green, and holed some really good long putts,” he said. “Getting into this first one of the Final Series opens the door for the next two [the Nedbank Challenge in South Africa and the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai] and, if I have a top ten here, that would take care of everything.”