Rod Pampling will take plenty of confidence to St Andrews this week after a solid performance at the John Deere Classic in the US.

Pampling, who qualified for the year’s third
major courtesy of a good finish at the Australian Open last December, moved 11
places up the leaderboard thanks to a final round 67 but it is his putting
statistic which was most impressive.

While T41 was not the overall result he was
looking for a Strokes Gained Putting statistic of 1.896 bodes well for the
large greens at St Andrews.

Pampling was one of five Australians in the
field in Illinois and one of three who will be on the charter flight to St
Andrews.

Cameron Percy (T62) and Greg Chalmers (T69)
were the others to make the cut while Aaron Baddeley and Steve Bowditch missed
the weekend’s play.

Chalmers and Bowditch will join Pampling in
Scotland this week and while neither would have been happy with their
performance at TPC Deere Run both will be looking forward to the challenge of
St Andrews.

Like Pampling, Chalmers earned his place in
the field with a good finish at the Australian Open while Bowditch’s
consistency this year saw him gain a place via his FedEx Cup standing.

For Chalmers the John Deere broke a run of
three straight missed cuts so while not a great result on the leader board the
week was indicative of a turnaround of sorts.

For Bowditch it was the opposite, the
Queenslander having been in good form in recent weeks with five consecutive
cuts made and back to back top 20’s at his last two starts.

Things went wrong in the first round for
Bowditch where he couldn’t recover from a double bogey at the par-5 second and
went on to post a 2-over 74.

In a low scoring tournament it was always
going to be a tough ask from there and despite a second round 67 Bowditch found
himself with the weekend off.

However, since winning his first PGA TOUR
title last season Bowditch has been an improved player week to week and while
consistency is still not his strong suit he is less prone to lengthy runs of poor
form.

For Cameron Percy a third round 75 proved
costly this week as he tries to advance on the FedEx Cup points list.

After a solid 68-68 start Percy was in good
position to improve on his FedEx Cup ranking of 149^th but a string
of bogies on Saturday put paid to his chances and he remains 149^th
with just five full field events remaining in the season.

Aaron Baddeley finds himself in a similar
predicament dropping to 148^th on the FedEx Cup list after missing
the cut in Illinois.