Dan Gaunt at Sicilian Open
Dan Gaunt of Australia sat down The Masters at the weekend on the reserve list for the Maybank Malaysia Open this week in Kuala Lumpur and by the time he saw fellow countrymen Adam Scott, Jason Day and Geoff Ogilvy sign their cards in the recorders hut, Gaunt was packing his bags for Malaysia.
Having been on the reserve list on a couple of occasions during the European Tour’s Gulf Swing earlier in the season, Gaunt was keen to get back into action after the Trophee Hassan II in windy Agadir a few weeks ago, where he finished 74th. Having missed four cuts in eight starts the Melbourne golfer is keen to kick start his season and get a run of events under his belt and some valuable pay cheques in the 2011 Race to Dubai.
However, as a graduate from the Challenge Tour and with a Category 10b exemption he also needs some luck to get bumped up the reserve list and get playing as often as possible.
A contemporary of Adam Scott and Geoff Ogilvy and all-round sportsman, Gaunt competes again on The European Tour after a sensational 2010 campaign on the Challenge Tour after spending the summer playing predominantly on third tier tours across the United Kingdom. His efforts were not in vain as he had four wins on the 66 Pro Tour and one on the Europro Tour.
Through his place at the top of the Europro Order of Merit he earned a place in the field for the inaugural English Challenge on the European Challenge Tour, which he promptly won – beating rising star Tommy Fleetwood by one stroke – before adding a further five top ten finishes from his remaining ten appearances to earn promotion to The European Tour as the seventh graduate.
It was his brother and father who first introduced him to the game at the age of ten, and he turned his back on Aussie Rules Football to pursue golf. A promising tennis player, he would have considered playing tennis professionally if golf had not worked out.
On Thursday at the Maybank Malaysia Open Gaunt is paired with Kodai Ichihara of Japan and Malaysian, R. Nachimuthu.
