Only about 1 per cent of all amateur golfers reach the holy grail of playing off scratch, but Freddy got his handicap down to zero when he was just 13 years old, making him a teenage prodigy in his home region of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Winning local junior and amateur tournaments by the dozen, the youngster quickly got the attention of one of Germany’s golfing legends on the European Tour: Marcel Siem. At the age of 16, Freddy was paired in foursomes with Siem, playing in Germany’s Golf-Bundesliga for their home club. “Marcel came to me very casually and asked me if I would like to do it. He was one of my big idols and suddenly I was standing on the first tee with him. Of course I was nervous!” says Freddy, remembering his first time teeing it up not only with a tour professional but also a childhood hero of his. “I was the local hero in the club back then with a handicap of +3, but when a seasoned pro you know from TV suddenly stands in front of you and says, 'Come on boy, let's gamble!' everything you've done so far as a junior golfer doesn't count much. But I still remember that the atmosphere was relaxed, and Marcel quickly took my nerves away.”

Sharing the same outgoing and fun-loving character traits, the duo of Siem and Freddy play a lot of golf together in league competitions and quickly became friends off the golf course as well. “No doubt, without Marcel I wouldn't be where I am today as a golfer,” Freddy states, underlining the importance of the five-time winner on the European Tour as a mentor and role model.

After finishing school, Freddy received numerous offers from universities in the United States to join their golf teams, but at 19 years old at the time, he chose a different path. “After I graduated from high school in 2019, I played the big amateur tournaments for another year and quickly realised that I wasn't enjoying it anymore and wanted to take the next step. And that was very clear: become a professional. I wanted to expose myself to the pressure of professional life as quickly as possible to see if I could survive in this environment.

“The US was and still is seen as the perfect path to professional golf. America is cool, but you have to fit in there as a person and really live this lifestyle. Just like you have to really want life as a young professional. I looked at it and came to the conclusion that I'm more of the self-determined type and therefore simply wrong at college. The decision in January 2021 at the age of 19 to become a professional was also related to the fact that I didn't want to go into these rigid structures, but wanted to tackle my life in a self-determined manner and work on my golf game.”

Freddy even caddied for his friend Marcel at a DP World Tour event in Austria in 2020, an eye-opening experience for him since he left the tournament thinking: ‘I can play with those guys and even beat them, I'm sure.’ That meant leaving the comfortable surroundings of a decorated amateur career and starting life as a tour pro with no status at all. Monday qualifiers, and extremely tough weeks on the Challenge Tour, were the norm.

After playing 14 tournaments on the Challenge Tour in his first season as a professional, Freddy finished 98th in the rankings, far away from any chance of a promotion to the DP World Tour. But in his second season on the Challenge Tour, Freddy found the success he was so accustomed to as an amateur by posting five top-5 finishes during 2022, including his maiden professional win at the Frederikshavn Challenge in Denmark.