Chips go down as Jacobson cashes in

THREE chip-ins – one for birdie, one for bogey and then one for eagle at the penultimate hole – took Sweden’s Fredrik Jacobson to an amazing comeback victory yesterday.

The 28-year-old won the Algarve Portuguese Open at Vale do Lobo on his return from a 10-week injury lay-off that left him so rusty he lost five balls practicing on the eve of the event.

Winner of the Hong Kong Open in December, Jacobson hurt his left wrist at the start of this year and had not played since missing the halfway cut in the Heineken Classic in Australia on January 31.

But in dramatic fashion he beat Londoner Brian Davis and Welsh pair Bradley Dredge and Jamie Donaldson by a single shot.

Jacobson chipped in at the first, then at the third to drop only one shot after driving out of bounds. But the one at the 526-yard 17th was the one that settled the race for the £142,541 first prize.

He was in a five-way tie with Davis, Dredge, Donaldson and long-time leader Greg Owen at the time, but finding the target from short of the green put him two clear and enabled him to bogey the last.

“Coming back to win is unbelievable,” said Jacobson, who moves from 33rd to fifth on the European Order of Merit thanks to his five-under-par total of 283.

“I’ve not been swinging it well and today I thought it was going to be heart and brains that won it. I had a funny feeling that maybe really good things were going to happen.

“But all I was looking for from the week was for the wrist to hold up and get four rounds in.

“I’ve not even been able to practice my short game much because of the injury, but I did really, really well around the greens.”