Ken Borland

Sun City is hoping that luck’s with them this year and they are able to host the Nedbank Golf Challenge, but in the meantime South Africa’s juniors will have the good fortune of playing the Gary Player Country Club in a major event as the new Nedbank Junior Challenge was announced on Wednesday.

The prestigious Nedbank Golf Challenge was not held in 2020 due to Covid and not being able to have crowds in attendance, and tournament director Ken Payet said it was still too early to say whether ‘Africa’s Major’ would be able to take place this year. The European Tour have scheduled the tournament for November 11-14.

“We’ve been having discussions and from the Nedbank and European Tour perspective it is still too early and anything we say would be just speculation. We’re obviously hoping to put it on this year, but it depends on the regulations in place. By the end of June or July we will make a call, but there are just too many moving parts at the moment in terms of the regulations and everyone waiting for the third wave,” Payet said on Wednesday.

The good news though is that the country’s top juniors will get the whole famous Gary Player Country Club experience from May 3-5, with the winner of the event getting to be a part of the Nedbank Golf Challenge as an observer in the inner circle.

The 54-hole tournament will offer world amateur ranking points on a par with the SA Amateur Championship and the 78-man field will be drawn from the top-50 on the GolfRSA rankings as well as giving exposure to an excellent array of development golfers, through the SA Golf Development Board.

The winner will receive a replica of the famous crystal-ball Nedbank Golf Challenge senior trophy and might even be able to play a practice round with one of the players in the field for the professional showpiece.

Grant Hepburn, the CEO of GolfRSA, said there has already been an excellent response to the tournament.

“Entries have been open for one week and we are well over-subscribed already with 86 applications, so we will have the cream of the crop playing. We’re very excited to be taking our top amateurs to such an iconic venue. We all grew up watching the Nedbank Golf Challenge and it is such a big part of the South African sporting scene. This event is important for us to keep producing golfers at the highest level,” Hepburn said.

The Sunshine Ladies Tour returns to action on Wednesday with the Cape Town Ladies Open at Royal Cape Golf Club, giving South Africa’s women professional golfers some much needed-competitive action, and leading contender Lejan Lewthwaite is hoping to negotiate the next six weeks of action with considerably more ease than when she tried to do her job last year.

Due to Covid, there was only one Sunshine Ladies Tour event last year after the SA Open in March, the Investec Royal Swazi Open in October, for South Africa’s women professionals to earn a living. Lewthwaite, being one of the top women’s golfers in the country and a three-time winner on tour, is at least able to get invitations to play overseas. But even that did not work out as planned.

“I actually caught Covid in June but then I kept testing positive and then negative and then positive again, so it was very stressful and I couldn’t play the number of tournaments I wanted to overseas. There were plenty of false positives in those tests, but the authorities kept thinking that I had recontracted Covid. But my last pro tournament was in November in Spain.

“Since then I’ve just played a bit in Bushveld Tour events and with the men on the IGT Tour. I’ve just been trying to get back into competitive mode again, but it’s been a very difficult year. I’ve had to have lots of patience and just stick to my guns; there has been lots of practise, which does get quite frustrating at times. We’ve been out of proper competition for so long that I can’t wait to get those competitive juices flowing again,” Lewthwaite told The Citizen on Tuesday.

There is no substitute for tournament play and there was a definite air of tremendous excitement at Royal Cape on Tuesday, and not just because of the perfect, still day, for the 60 golfers who played their final practice rounds before teeing off the new season on Wednesday.

There will be four other events on the Sunshine Ladies Tour this season – at Glendower, Gary Player Country Club at Sun City, Soweto Country Club and Fancourt – before the circuit concludes with the Investec SA Women’s Open at Westlake Golf Club from May 13.

“We’re all extremely excited, it’s a great schedule ending with the Investec SA Open in May and a good stretch of tournaments before that on really nice courses. Personally I love all the courses we’ll be playing on and we all feel very blessed to be playing again. So thanks to the Sunshine Tour, the Women’s Professional Golf Association and Investec,” Lewthwaite said.

Louis Oosthuizen has a few homes scattered around South Africa and the United States but Augusta is a place where he has always looked pretty comfortable. Since his runner-up finish in 2012, he has only finished outside of the top-30 twice, earning himself $1 733 600 (more than R25 million) and he has finished under-par on his last three visits. South Africa’s top-ranked golfer has only played in five events this year, but he is sure to be up for the occasion at Augusta.

Christiaan Bezuidenhout won the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the SA Open on successive weekends at the end of last year and finished 2020 ranked 34^th in the world, a remarkable jump from 521^st at the end of 2018. The 26-year-old is aiming to base himself on the U.S. PGA Tour and is well on his way to gaining membership, helped by a top-10 finish in the Arnold Palmer Invitational. He is already making an impression in America and his straight hitting, superb short game and strong mind are ideally suited to the challenges of Augusta.

Augusta is not an easy place to start a comeback after injury deposits you outside the top-200 in the world rankings, and that’s the reality facing South Africa’s last Masters champion, Charl Schwartzel. The 2011 winner has been through a tough time lately with a wrist injury but, without any real form behind him, he showed the value of experience at Augusta in last year’s November Masters as he finished tied-25^th, his best finish in a major since 2017. Hopefully he can produce something similar this week.

Dylan Frittelli is one of the lesser-known South African stars but you can’t hide his pedigree – World No.68 and the best South African finisher at last year’s Masters, in a tie for fifth. After missing four of his seven cuts on the PGA Tour this year, he bounced back by making the last 16 of the World Matchplay Championships two weeks ago, before he lost to English star Tommy Fleetwood. The 30-year-old is still working for more consistency in his game after changing his Driver and going for more clubhead speed, but he is a dark horse this week.

Louis Oosthuizen will once again hog the Major limelight amongst South African golfers as he tees off at the Masters on Thursday in one of the feature three-balls, but there are also five other local stars gunning for glory at Augusta.

It will be a Masters unlike any other because not only have spectators been banned due to the Covid-19 pandemic but it is also taking place in winter, far removed from it’s usual slot at the height of spring in April.

Oosthuizen, South Africa’s highest-ranked golfer at No.19 in the world and third in the U.S. Open in September, has been drawn with new sensation Bryson de Chambeau, who won the previous Major, and Spain’s Jon Rahm, who is also one of the favourites to win the famous green jacket.

The 38-year-old Oosthuizen is considered one of the top draws in world golf due to his stellar record in the Majors. He may have won just one – the 2010 Open Championship – but apart from finishing as the runner-up in all four, he has also claimed three other top-10 finishes.

Erik van Rooyen, Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Dylan Frittelli are the other South African golfers within the top-100 in the world rankings who will be playing at Augusta, with Van Rooyen and Bezuidenhout making their Masters debuts.

Van Rooyen told his Twitter followers that he had goosebumps watching videos of Augusta and “cannot wait for the first tee shot”, while Bezuidenhout described it as “a dream come true”.

Justin Harding, on his debut at Augusta, was South Africa’s best finisher in last year’s tournament, his tie for 12^th earning him a place in the 2020 field.

Charl Schwartzel has dropped out of the world top 200 after struggling since his return from a wrist injury, but is in the field thanks to his 2011 Masters triumph.

Trevor Immelman, the 2008 Masters champion, also had an exemption to play, but the South African has decided to be in the television commentary box instead.