Max Schmitt is using motivation garnered by seeing his fellow German players perform well on the Road to Mallorca ahead of this week’s Indoor Golf Group Challenge.
The 24-year-old is currently 42nd on the Road to Mallorca Rankings but has watched intently as several of his countrymen have achieved success in 2022, with Alex Knappe, Marc Hammer, Velten Meyer and Freddy Schott all tasting success.
Those triumphs mean three of those men – Hammer, Knappe and Schott, the current Number One – all currently occupy spots in the top 20, along with Nick Bachem following his season of consistency, and Schmitt is using that as inspiration to mount a late challenge for a DP World Tour card.
“It’s always great to see all of the other German guys playing well,” he said. “It’s not really a rivalry but I’d say if they play well, I want to play well too. It motivates me to keep pushing, keep trying. It’s been a good couple of weeks so far and I’m looking forward to the next two weeks, here and Belgium.
“That event in Germany was the highlight of the season. It’s always nice to play on home soil and have a good week there. Based on that, I got a lot of confidence and I got a nice result last week. The game is trending in the right direction, I’m really looking forward to the next couple of events.
“In golf, you never really know when your time is going to be. Over the last couple of years I was really struggling to be honest. I wasn’t playing great, I still played on the DP World Tour but if you miss a few cuts and you’re not really close to the top 115, you think should I be playing Challenge Tour or DP World Tour? It wasn’t great but now the confidence is pretty high and I want to finish in the top 20 at the end of the year.”
Schmitt’s fledgling career has already contained many highlights, including winning three times as an amateur on the Pro Golf Tour in 2017, but some of his fondest memories come from time spent in Scandinavia, hence his joy at teeing it up at Allerum Golfklubb in Sweden this week.
“It’s nice to be in Scandinavia and be able to drive to most places,” he said. “I’ve got nice experiences from Finland with the German National Team back in the day, so it’s been treating me nicely over the last couple of years.
“I was about 16 or 17 and we had the European Boys Team Championships in Finland so me and my friends had a great week there. I actually made the important putt at the end to win the last match against Marcus Svensson to get in the trophy.”
