There is never a good time to card a ’10,’ but one PGA Tour Canada pro may have used his double-digit score to turn around his season.
Austen Christiansen, a 26-year-old Houston native, was six holes into his second round on Friday at the ATB Classic when he recorded a quintuple-bogey 10 on the par-5 sixth hole at Northern Bear in Strathcona County, Alberta. The massive blunder dropped him from 3 under – a day earlier he had posted a wild 2-under 70 that included an eagle and two doubles – to 2 over, well below the projected cut line.
But Christiansen rallied with six birdies and no dropped shots over his final 12 holes to make the cut by two shots.
“I knew I needed to make another cut to kind of secure my starts,” said Christiansen, who turned pro out of BYU in 2019 and earned his PGA Tour Canada card for the first time earlier this year. He missed the cut in his tour debut before tying for 61St last week at the Elk Ridge Saskatchewan Open.
“So, I was like, you can just put your head down and make some birdies, or you can go home and think about it for a week and put some pressure on yourself the next two weeks.”
Christiansen chose the former. He birdied the par-4 seventh hole right after his ’10,’ and later rolled off four straight birdies, at Nos. 13-16.
While Christiansen is eight shots back of co-leaders Nicolo Galletti, Davis Lamb and Eric Lilleboe, he has himself a pair of weekend tee times.
“Down the road when I make it onto the big Tour,” Christiansen added, getting choked up, “then I’m going to look back on that 10 – I think I saved my summer.”