Tasmanian Kalem Richardson dropped four places on the Macau Open leaderboard but, more importantly, moved up 10 places on the Asian Tour Order of Merit with a T13 result at the weekend.

The 28-year-old has found form the past two weeks after struggling for much of the 2016 season and is now within sight of retaining his playing rights for 2017.

With six missed cuts in 13 starts for the year Richardson was in danger of losing his playing privileges but has turned things around dramatically in the past fortnight.

He shared the 36-hole lead at last week’s Indonesian Masters on his way to his first top 10 of the year and was again part of the leading group with two rounds to play in Macau.

His weekend scores of 72-72 were less than his best but his cheque for $15,257 jumped him from 72nd on the Order of Merit to 62nd.

The top 60 at season’s end are assured of a card for next year and while there is work left to do Richardson is now heading in the right direction.

While Richardson found some of his best form this week it was the opposite for defending champion Scott Hend.

A second round 67 looked to have him back on track but he couldn’t maintain the momentum and weekend scores of 71-73 dropped him to T34.

Richardson and Hend were among 12 Australians to make the cut in Macau, Unho Park (T18) and Sam Brazel (T28) next best after Richardson.

Adam Groom and Marcus Both (T40) were the last of the group to finish under par for the week ahead of Marcus Fraser and Kevin Lee (T46), Terry Pilkadaris (T51), Josh Younger and Lucas Herbert (T63) and Darren Tan (T80).