Summer vacation is over for the Japan Golf Tour players, this week the second half of the season will kick off from August 22nd at The North Country Golf Club in Hokkaido with "Shigeo Nagashima Invitational SEGASAMMY Cup Golf Tournament".

Jazz Janewattananond, 23 years old from Thailand now holds the lead on the Order of Merit race.
He has won this years SMCB Singapore Open has earned the ticket to join Japan Golf Tour. He has become 2nd on the Round 2 of the PGA Championship, which he finished at tied t0 16th. This additional prize money of 2,060,720 yen also helped him make a gap in his lead against the others who aims to catch him.

Jazz is slim but has great swing which makes 300 yards easily. He is also 2nd on the STATS for the Driving accuracy and is top on the Scoring Average, Par or Better Percentage, and Total Driving as well. He has made 3 top 10 finishes this season.

His real name is Atiwit, but since his father loved Jazz, game him a nickname which Jazz recorded in as his professional name when he turned Pro at age of 14. Jazz first appeared on the Japan Tour in 2011, at age of 15, at Asia Pacific Panasonic Open where he made the CUT with the youngest record attached. On Asian Tour, his first win came in 2017, now has 4 victories under his belt. His next big dream is to make his way to the US PGA Tour. He joined Japan Tour to gain the experience and a chance to make that big leap to US PGA.

Now, his locked on to the ZOZO Championship, co-sanctioned event with Japan and US PGA, will be held at Narashino CC in Chiba Prefecture in October. Top 7 Money Rank players after the October's Bridgestone Open has the privilege to enter that ZOZO Championship field.

Tiger Woods has already made his announcement that he will join the filed, who also has family ties to Thailand (his mother's country).
"But Tiger is born and raised in USA", says Jazz, but he worships Tiger and keeps his photo as a lucky charm.
"I really want to make it into that tournament."

At this moment, last year's Order of Merit Champion Shugo Imahira sits only 1,500,000 yen behind in 2nd place, followed by 3rd Yosuke Asaji, 4th Mikumu Horikawa, 5th Rikuya Hoshino, and 6th Ryo Ishikawa, all talented young guns leaking to catch up with Jazz.