Stephan Jaeger says crack-of-dawn ace sparked big reaction – from two fans

Stephan Jaeger, who shot a 6-under 66 to get into early contention at the World Wide Technology Championship in Los Cabos, Mexico, was coming off a much-needed three-week break.

At the tail end of a PGA TOUR season in which he has made 28 of 31 cuts, his best campaign so far, he needed to refresh his body and mind for one last big push in the fall.

Well, that worked out well.

Although he bogeyed his first hole, the par-4 10th at the Tiger Woods-designed El Cardonal, Jaeger watched as his tee shot rolled into the cup at the 189-yard, par-3 11th.

So much for rust.

“They put the pin in a little kind of bowl, you could use the right side,” said Jaeger, 34, who hasn’t played since the Sanderson Farms Championship (T25) almost a month ago. “It was early, the greens were pretty soft still. I kind of landed it just inside the green and got a nice left bounce and we watched it roll. I was like, oh, this could be pretty good, and then it disappeared, and people were yelling. Well, the two people that were out at 6:45 this morning.”

It was Jaeger’s second hole-in-one on the PGA TOUR, and first since the 2021 Corales Punta Cana Championship. He is 58th in the FedExCup Fall, on track for The Next 10 (Nos. 51-60 after The RSM Classic). Those players will earn spots in the first two Signature Events of next season, after The Sentry: the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and The Genesis Invitational.

He said the recent rest did him good, as his opening round attests.

“My body was pretty beat up after last season,” Jaeger said, “and I needed some time to get back to things I wanted to do in the offseason. Those two to three weeks between the tournaments really kind of gave me the opportunity to do that.

“Body-wise I'm feeling great,” he continued, “golf swing feels great. You just never know when you come in competition if you're rusty or not. We did a really good job kind of playing to our spots and kind of avoiding the big no-nos out here, for sure.”