It has been a busy ten days for Jack Senior after qualifying for the Open Championship, playing in Slovakia, and now preparing for the Le Vaudreuil Golf Challenge this week.
The Englishman, along with fellow European Challenge Tour players Matthew Baldwin and Garrick Porteous, came through Final Qualifying at St Annes Old Links on Monday before jetting off to the D+D REAL Slovakia Challenge.
He recorded rounds of 66-70-71-70 for a tied tenth result and will be hoping to follow that up with another strong performance in France, ahead his successive Open Championship appearance.
You qualified for The Open Championship at the beginning of last week via the Final Qualifying stage. What were your emotions after those two rounds?
It was a positive. Over the last few weeks I felt like I wasn’t playing too badly, but the scores weren’t reflecting that, so it was a positive to get two good scores under my belt. It also did a lot for my confidence to see that the results were starting to happen a little bit.
After qualifying for The Open through the same process last year, was it a goal to do it again this year?
I wouldn’t say it was a goal. But any time you go to a qualifying event you want to be as successful as you can, so that was a goal at the start of the day. It’s a golf course I’ve done pretty well at in the past and I’ve always liked it and played well, and that paid off again.
There were three Challenge Tour players; Garrick Porteous, Matthew Baldwin and yourself, who all qualified. Does that show how competitive the Challenge Tour is?
It was the same last year. James Robinson, Marcus Armitage and I qualified together. I played with Matt which was nice as well.
It shows the strength in depth on the tour. The guys are getting better and better, and the result showed that.
What a day for Garrick Porteous, @JSenior88 & @mattbaldwin26. They beat the field @stannesgreens and are heading to Royal Portrush 👏👏 pic.twitter.com/SBrMgyfycv
— The Open (@TheOpen) July 2, 2019
You then went straight to Slovakia, eventually getting there after a three-hour flight delay. Was that a draining few days, mentally and physically?
I had no practise round but got up on Thursday morning and made the effort to walk the course before playing that afternoon and I reaped the rewards with a good start to the week. I didn’t feel overly tired, but I haven’t been hitting that many balls after rounds.
It’s June and July and you’re working out your schedule to play as much as you can and if you take a week off, then I feel like you lose a bit of momentum. For me, taking this week off wasn’t in my plans. If I took it off then I’d be putting a lot of pressure on The Open, but playing this week focuses the mind on here in France and not what is coming up.
Is momentum key then? Especially after a tied tenth finish last week and ahead of travelling to Royal Portrush.
Playing well in any event is good. Tied tenth last week wasn’t quite what I wanted because I didn’t do what I wanted to do over the weekend because I felt like I was in a good position ahead of the final two rounds. Like with any week it can be because of the fine margins, hitting a poor shot, having a bad break, or not holing the putts from ten to 15 feet when you’re giving yourself chances.
I felt like I’ve kept my momentum going pretty well but you never know with this game with how long the form is going to last, but I’ve played the Pro-Am this morning and I’m looking forward to another good week.
