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Overnight Friday Stephan Jaeger was an inexperienced leader ahead of a pack of inexperienced winners.
Of the top nine players heading into the final round of the Farmers Insurance Open, none of them had won on the PGA Tour before, including Jaeger, who birded the 18th Friday to take the lead by one.
But among the group tied for 10th were some of the PGA Tour’s blue bloods. Xander Schauffele, Tony Finau, Will Zalatoris and Ludvig Aberg were all in the group at seven under to start the final round.
However, winning isn’t exactly a foreign concept to Jaeger. The 34-year-old has six wins on the Korn Ferry Tour, tied for the second most of all-time after Jason Gore.
But that’s not something he leaned on Sunday as he chased down his inaugural victory on the PGA Tour. He expected to feel the pressure for the final round.
“It’s great to have some past success, but you really— that doesn’t really get you anything,” he said Friday night. “I’m going to feel it tomorrow, I’m going to be nervous.
“I think [winning is] a learned skill. I don’t think you wake up and you’re automatically a winner or champion. I think anybody that says differently’s wrong, but I think you can definitely learn it. Some of those guys, you see some of the all-time greats, it’s definitely a skill.
“It’s definitely something I’ve done before, but I’m going to lean on stuff I’ve been really working on the last six months or a year.”
But while Jaeger has experience winning on the Korn Ferry Tour, he wasn’t playing for the same $1.62 million first-place prize he did at Torrey Pines.
Here is a complete list of the 2024 Farmers Insurance Open payouts for all 79 players who made the cut. The total purse is $9 million.
How much every player made at the 2024 Farmers Insurance Open
1. Matthieu Pavon – $1,620,000
2. Nicolai Højgaard – $981,000
T3. Stephan Jaeger – $477,000
T3. Nate Lashley – $477,000
T3. Jake Knapp – $477,000