By Camilla Tait Robb
The latest rising star from a close-knit group of Danes who have pushed each other since junior golf, Jacob Skov Olesen arrives for his first start at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic with lofty goals and a quiet sense of belonging.
We are sitting just outside the Players’ Lounge on the driving range at Emirates Golf Club, the hum of the practice day unfolding around us. It’s new Dubai resident Jacob Skov Olesen’s first time competing here, but from his calm, composed demeanour, you would never guess it.
Twelve months ago, he was a name only attentive followers of amateur golf might have recognised. Now, just months after becoming the sole graduate from Qualifying School to reach the DP World Tour Championship, the left-hander tees it up in Dubai as one of the rising stars of Denmark’s ever-growing generation of young talent.
For Olesen, those roots stretch back to childhood. He took up the game at six and decided by twelve that golf was the path he wanted to follow. “My parents always say I was always fascinated about golf courses for some reason when we were travelling,” he says. “If I saw a golf course, I was just glued to the car window looking at it. And then back then we did not know anything about golf. My parents thought you could not really play when you were a kid and such. But then I had a friend that I was doing football and such with. And then I went out to the course as well, I think when I was six and tried it as well. And then when I was 12 or 13, I quit football to just play golf only.”
A move to Copenhagen for school brought him into the orbit of the players he shares the fairways with again with this week. “The Højgaards, Rasmus and Nicolai, and Rasmus Neergaard Petersen, we were all in the same junior National team together,” he says. “I have known Rasmus (Neergaard-Petersen) since we were 13, probably. I have been good friends with him for a long time, we went to the same high school. We have had the same coach since then too.”
Yet for all the familiar faces around him now, their routes to this stage have been diverse. And while on paper Olesen’s journey from junior golf to college in the United States and then Qualifying School looks like a well-trodden path, it does not capture the detours, doubts and decisions that shaped his way here.
While the Højgaards turned professional early, both Neergaard Petersen and Olesen chose the college route. For Olesen, that decision came only after real hesitation.
“I was quite terrible when I got to college,” he says, deadpan. “Maybe plus two or something.”
“I didn't really want to go to college at first after high school, but I wasn't good enough to play and you can't really mix university and golf at home. So I ended up kind of last minute trying to go to the States, but my game wasn't really that good and I didn't really have great grades either.”
Junior college became the only realistic option, and the alternative didn’t appeal. “So I ended up in junior college in Texas and I was like, 'hey, I'll just go see what it is'. I didn't want to go through that grind on a third level tour for years compared to going to college and having some sort of a degree to fall back on, and you can always move your way out of junior college quite easily.”
He played well, transferred to Arkansas to study a communications degree, and slowly, steadily, began to find his footing. But even then, it wasn’t smooth, and there were moments in his penultimate year that had him briefly second guessing himself.
“When you get to that age and you aren’t performing, you start thinking, 'should I just finish this out and move on?'. But I don't think I really ever got to there. Maybe sometimes jokingly you've told me about it, but I kind of gave it that year, to see if I could really dig in and get better. And I did.”
What changed for him?
“Time,” he says simply. “Just getting better, getting more stable, getting more mature.”
That maturity crystallised with his victory at The Amateur Championship in 2024, but the irony was that his greatest amateur achievement almost didn’t happen. The newly formed Global Amateur Pathway (GAP) Ranking — created by the DP World Tour, PGA TOUR and The R&A to give elite amateurs a direct route into the professional game — nudged him back in the direction of a competition he’d so far avoided due to an aversion to playing links golf. After college, he’d hovered on the edge of turning pro, but the GAP Ranking kept him waiting just a little longer. What followed was a win that quietly reset the trajectory of his career.
“After college, because of the Global Amateur Pathway, I didn't turn pro right away," he says. "I was sort of in the hunt, so I figured I might as well just wait, and then obviously that happened and kind of just propelled everything."
“I’d always hated links golf,” he admits, laughing now. “That was my first links tournament since 2017. Normally I wouldn’t have played it, but I needed a strong event, so I went.”
He didn’t feel like his golf was spectacular. It didn’t need to be.
“I just played solid,” he says. “In tough conditions, that’s enough. You can let the other people make the mistakes.
“I knew my game was trending. I'd done really well over at Arkansas for my fifth year, made All-American team and knew the game was there, but I just hadn't gotten anything over the line. I think it was top 15, my last nine events at Arkansas, but never really got it done.”
The significance of the win wasn’t lost on him. “It was amazing. I think I’ve always had the talent but not always fulfilled it. It makes all those years feel worth it,” he says. “Especially the times when the game felt hopeless.”
He didn’t win the overall GAP Ranking to earn DP World Tour status, but the victory boosted him high enough to secure a HotelPlanner Tour card and, crucially, meant he arrived at Q School with something rare: a safety net. His Amateur victory meant that staying as an amateur would have given him a Masters start, but with a tie for fifth at the Danish Golf Championship on the DP World Tour in August, his mindset was clear. He’d waited long enough.
“Yeah, when I signed up — even at second stage — it was like, 'if I get all the way through this, then I'm turning pro'. There wasn’t really any point in going if I wasn’t going to turn pro if I got a card.”
That clarity gave him freedom.
“I think I said after the first day I might be the one playing here with the least amount of pressure," he added. "I didn’t really feel like I was playing for my job.”
Inside the top ten heading into the final round, things were going incredibly well. Until they weren’t.
“Some people were saying I’d already done it after the fifth round, and that’s not what you want to hear when you make the turn and suddenly you’re only two shots inside the line," he says.
“It was horrible. I played terrible. It's an easy course, but if you don't really get it going you can quite easily be around level par and there's a lot of people right behind that have all to win, nothing to lose. And I kind of had everything to lose and almost sort of felt like I had nothing to win.
“And then you quickly end up turning in level par and then you're not that far inside and all of a sudden I had to par the last three just to creep in on the number.”
He signed for a two over 73, and with that, the decision he’d already made became official. Less than two weeks later, he was teeing up in his first DP World Tour event as a professional.
Hoping to make a fast start, he quickly followed an opening missed cut with a top 30 in the second event in Australia followed by his first top ten in Mauritius. It was the first of six top tens across the season, which included third place at the Nexo Championship in Scotland (a links course, of course), and saw him finish at 41st on the 2025 Race to Dubai.
It was good,” Olesen reflects on his rookie season. “I kind of just went into it with the mentality that every point matters. For this, the re-ranking obviously helped me out a lot. But I knew there was that. That's why we just went straight ahead on the road. Because I knew I could jump 20 spots. Three good weeks, three solid weeks, and I did, and then from there on gave me, I mean, a good amount of tournaments to play in, and kind of just kept chipping away.”
One of the standout moments of his year came when he led The Open after the first round at Royal Portrush, but it’s not an experience he holds incredibly fond memories of, having had an eight on the first hole of his second round. Difficult at the time, he can now look back on it with good perspective.
“Disappointment," he says. "I think the second day, well mainly the first hole kind of overshadowed it all. I almost went from the lead to the cut line in one hole. But I mean, I still took some away. I still managed to make the cut. So still, it's nice not to completely toss it all up in the air and play decent onwards the last 17 holes and make the weekend even though I didn't get much out of it.”
“I almost went from the lead to the cut line in one hole,” he adds. He steadied himself, made the weekend, and took the lesson. “It was disappointment, mainly,” he says. “But I still made the cut. I didn’t toss it all up in the air.”
And the best twist? “Nowadays I love links golf,” he says, grinning.
Now, he’s starting a second season with perspective and new goals, with one major shift: a new home in Dubai with his girlfriend, Darcey Harry, who claimed her first win on the LET last year with Olesen on the bag. The benefits are obvious: winter weather, global travel convenience, and a base for the weeks when both are off. Now, it means the first Rolex Series event plays a little closer to home.
“It’s one of the tournaments you’ve always had marked down on the calendar,” he says.
“Everyone talks about how good it is, how good of a test it is and how good the field is as well. I’ve played the course. I was here for a week in November and there was a Danish member that wanted to accommodate us, so it was super nice, quite a great day. But just looking at it now, you can see how much has changed since November and how it’s set up for us.”
Something else that’s changed are his goals, with targets that are bigger – and harder to define than last season.
“It’s been a little more difficult to figure out,” he admits. “This year... we’re trying to be more structured."
“I think last year was a lot easier for me in terms of goals. It was just top 110. A win is up there, but that's also kind of a lazy and easy goal to set, because I don't think there's a single guy out here that doesn't have that. I also have a goal of top 25 on the Rankings, which is very ambitious, but it also has to be ambitious. You can always change your goals depending on how it goes.”
It’s an ambition that makes sense, having grown up with a group of Danish players that have all tasted success on the DP World Tour.
Near the end of our conversation, I ask him to tell me something people might not know about him — a detail that sits just outside the scorecards and leaderboards. He thought for a moment, then smiled.
“I’m a pretty decent poker player,” he says. “I played a lot in college.”
Suddenly, it all clicks into place. He approaches golf like a good poker player: with patience, calculation, and the nerve to commit when it counts. And he’s one to watch out for in 2026.
