Ken Borland

Dawie van der Walt held off the challenge of the in-form Darren Fichardt to win the inaugural Tshwane Open and claim the first major tour title of his career at the Els Club Copperleaf on Sunday.

The 6’5” Van der Walt shot a 67 in the final round to finish the co-sanctioned European/Sunshine tour event on 21-under-par, two strokes ahead of Fichardt, the new Order of Merit leader who won the Africa Open two weeks ago and finished in the top-10 last week at the Dimension Data Pro-Am.

Van der Walt began the final round in a four-way tie for the lead with compatriots Fichardt and Charl Coetzee and Chilean Mark Tullo. And the 30-year-old was under some early pressure as both Fichardt and Coetzee birdied the second and third holes.

But the Paarl product made his move on the par-five fourth hole, which began the tournament as the longest in European Tour history at 626m. With the tees moved forward on Sunday, a player of Van der Walt’s length was able to reach the green in two and he nailed the 15-foot putt for eagle.

Birdies followed on the sixth and seventh holes and, although there was a bit of a wobble around the turn, Van der Walt sealed the biggest victory of his career with further birdies at the par-four 12^th and par-five 15^th holes.

There is no secrecy when it comes to what made Van der Walt successful around Copperleaf. Hitting the ball long is always useful at the Centurion course, but the U.S.-based golfer was impressively precise off the tee and especially with his irons.

“Lately I haven’t been hitting the ball so good, I’ve been playing terribly, but I found something in my swing at the Dimension Data and I felt something in my game coming here. I hit the ball really well and I missed just two fairways today and one green. It meant I hardly had to chip at all and that’s not my strength.

“It’s unbelievable to play well and win. Golf is a game where you don’t get many chances to win, some people never do, and often you play well and don’t win,” Van der Walt said.

The genial giant said his victory was all about goal-setting and not getting distracted by the bigger picture.

“I just wanted to play solid, I was aiming for five-under today and 10-under for the weekend, which worked out well. I’ve been in these situations a couple of times and if you think ahead you lose it. I just set a goal of being 10-under for the weekend and that would ensure I make a whole lot of money. I didn’t think it would be enough to win the tournament, but I would have taken second. I didn’t want to get ahead of myself,” Van der Walt admitted after shooting a pair of five-under-par 67s to finish the tournament on top.

It certainly did earn the six-year pro a whole lot of money – R2,781,675 to be precise, which translates into €237,750, considerably more than the €148,974 he had won in total on the European Tour before Sunday.

Van der Walt campaigns on the Web.com Tour in America, the level below the PGA Tour and formerly known as the Nationwide or Challenge Tour, and it presents the Kingwood, Texas resident with a conundrum in terms of where to play now that he has a two-year exemption on the lucrative European Tour.

“It definitely helps that the purses are a lot bigger in Europe! But I live in America now and I have full status on the Web.com Tour. My ultimate goal is to get on the PGA Tour but I can make my own schedule now and maybe I can go through the European Tour, that might be a lot easier,” Van der Walt said.

Van der Walt has four victories on satellite tours in the U.S., but a regular tour triumph had eluded him until Sunday. He admitted that there were times when he sat eating his cornflakes and wondering when the breakthrough would come.

“I’ve been a pro for six years and this is the first time I’ve won a big event. You see your friends doing it, you see other people winning, and you wonder when it will happen for you, whether it will ever happen for you, you wonder if you’re good enough.”

Fichardt finished at 19-under 269 and his third birdie, at the par-three fifth hole, gave him the lead on his own. But at that stage the putter went cold and 13 successive pars meant Van der Walt remained at arm’s length.

Louis de Jager shot a 69 on Sunday to finish third on 18-under, with former world number one amateur Peter Uihlein fourth on 17-under, the American also notching a three-under-par final round.

Sweden’s Bjorn Akesson, with a 65 on Sunday, Englishman Danny Willett (66) and Coetzee, who picked up a one-shot penalty for slow play at the 15^th, were tied for fifth at 16-under.

Tullo, the other overnight leader, fell away badly with a 77 which included a double-bogey 6 at the 13^th, where he twice hit into the water left of the green.

Van der Walt, meanwhile, tempered his attacking instincts with the sort of composure that turns the contenders into the champions. He showed this on the final hole when he took less club for his second shot to cater “for the adrenaline”.

The horrors of recent weeks – he said his father suggested he visit a sports psychologist, to which he replied “he’s not going to be able to tell me I’m hitting the ball straight when it’s going sideways” – are now a distant memory.

What is still fresh in Van der Walt’s mind though is the long, hard road he had to take to the podium at the Els Club Copperleaf.

“Playing on the mini-tours, where you have to pay your own fees, makes you hard. I have the instinct to win, every time I play, I’m trying to win,” the newest South African European Tour winner said.

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It’s been the proverbial season horribilis for the Nashua Titans with the Ram Slam T20 Challenge providing the last chance for the dominant franchise of 2011/12 to get something out of the summer.

The four-day Sunfoil Series was particularly galling for the Titans, who went into the competition as the defending champions, but lost eight of their 10 matches and failed to win any. To make it even more traumatic, their defeats were by huge margins – one by an innings and 247 runs, three by 10 wickets, one by nine wickets and others by 161 runs and 393 runs. Six of their matches were all over in three days.

The root of their travails would appear to be that the reserve talent in the squad responded poorly to the challenge of stepping up and replacing the likes of Faf du Plessis, Jacques Rudolph, Albie Morkel, Farhaan Behardien, Marchant de Lange, Paul Harris and Morne Morkel, who for various reasons only played 15 Sunfoil Series matches between them.

“The four-day campaign was dreadful and there were a combination of reasons. But it’s fair to say that the youth didn’t come through, they just didn’t execute their skills, either batting or bowling.

“Sometimes youngsters come in and take to it straight away, for others it takes them a while. We were playing three or four youngsters at once, whereas in an ideal world you’d like to knit one or two at a time into the team. We’ve got to work really hard,” coach Matthew Maynard admitted.

The Titans were, of course, rocked by twin tragedies at the start of the summer, with Maynard losing his son, Tom, a Surrey cricketer who was considered one of the most promising in England, and long-time and much-loved CEO Elise Lombard then passing away in August.

But their followers were heartened by their start to the season, making the semi-finals of the Champions League and then reaching the Momentum One-Day Cup playoff.

It is fair to say that the franchise are baffled by how the season just totally unravelled from that point.

Jacques Faul is the new CEO of the Titans and he admits that a franchise will always be judged by the performance of the team.

“The team is the showcase of the franchise and the play on the field is what we sell, if you like. I’ve been impressed with Matt Maynard as a coach, but even he doesn’t seem to really know where it all went wrong. He has worked out what we need though, going forward, and this has been such a successful franchise so I don’t think it will be difficult to return to winning ways,” Faul said.

A late resurgence in the T20 Challenge could, of course, turn around the whole season, especially in terms of the financial rewards it provides a franchise.

And the increased financial resources means Maynard could be in the market for some new players, while yesterday’s men slip from the scene.

“We still need to strengthen the squad and we’ll look to do that,” Maynard said.

Faul, drawing from his experience of helping to build the high-flying bizhub Highveld Lions team, is frustrated that the Titans allowed players like Hardus Viljoen, Imran Tahir and Gulam Bodi to slip away.

“You need to hang on to your talent, we were losing matches to teams with guys who used to play for the Titans, and you need a good mix of old and young players. It took the Highveld Lions a while to build their team. We know our national players are not going to play, it would be naïve to rely on them. We have to win without them and we have to create more stars to win,” Faul said.

The Titans management would seem to want a top-order batsman, a paceman and perhaps an experienced spinner, Harris having retired, who specialises in four-day cricket.

Of course, the Titans will look a different team when the likes of Rudolph, Albie Morkel, Behardien and De Lange play regularly.

“What the senior players bring to the table is match-winning performances. But the positive from the season is that guys like Graeme van Buuren, Francois le Clus and JP de Villiers look to have the potential to succeed at that level. The talent is there,” Maynard said.

The pressure will now be on the team and coaching staff to ensure that talent makes the Titans way more competitive next season.

The power-hitting of Dwaine Pretorius led the Highveld Lions to a seven-wicket victory over the Titans in their T20 Challenge match at the Wanderers on Wednesday.

Pretorius helped himself to three fours and four sixes as he bashed 42 runs off 20 balls to carry the Lions to 150 for three in 18.5 overs and victory with seven balls to spare.

Pacemen Sohail Tanvir and Hardus Viljoen, and spinner Aaron Phangiso had earlier claimed two wickets apiece in a stellar all-round bowling performance by the Lions that restricted the Titans to 148 for seven after being sent in to bat.

It was certainly a competitive total given the inconsistent bounce that saw several deliveries keep extremely low on an unusually poor Wanderers pitch.

–

AB de Villiers described him as “a captain’s dream” and this was after just 11.4 overs in his first Test.

But this was Kyle Abbott South Africa’s vice-captain was talking about after the Dolphins paceman had taken an extraordinary seven for 29 on debut to make sure the third Test against Pakistan at Centurion will always be indelibly linked to his name.

With three days to go, the third and final Test is in South African control as Abbott’s amazing bowling dismissed Pakistan for just 156 and, forced to follow-on 253 runs behind on first innings, they have already lost a wicket in their second innings.

Pakistan’s batting is ill-equipped to handle skilful seam bowling on helpful pitches and many cricketers have enjoyed sensational debuts without kicking on, but Abbott is blessed with the basic, yet seemingly most difficult skills, to make this an idle warning.

The 25-year-old is pacy enough and the nagging line just on or about off stump that he bowls, with his height often giving him steepling bounce, is guaranteed to put batsmen in danger.

Six of the seven wickets Abbott took fell to catches behind the wicket and the Kearsney College old boy is a perfect fit for the preferred South African tactics of controlled aggression, bounce and aiming for the edges of the opposition bats.

“He’s a captain’s dream. He bowls with a lot of control, he’s really consistent, hits the deck hard and finds the outside edges. He gets good torque on the ball and gets the batsmen to play. He was amazing today,” De Villiers gushed.

The Zululand product’s figures were the best ever in the first innings of a debut Test for South Africa (fifth overall) and the second best by a Proteas bowler in his first Test. The South African record is held by Lance Klusener, who just happens to be the lanky paceman’s coach at the Dolphins, and who took eight for 64 in the memorable 329-run victory over India in Kolkata in 1996, the tourists’ first win there.

The famously taciturn Klusener has undoubtedly been the major factor in Abbott’s rise from talented paceman to the best on the domestic circuit, but the advice the debutant received from his mentor on the eve of his big day was of the brief but meaningful variety.

“He phoned me on Thursday night and I was telling him that Jacques Kallis had got injured and I was going to play, and he was just saying ‘yes, ja, ok, yes’, but then he just said ‘keep it tidy’ and that was the end of the conversation,” Abbott said.

The reserved Klusener was unfairly criticised during his playing days for not being a team man, but it must now be official, the man is a man-management genius.

“Lance has been unbelievable, what a guy! He has really helped me mentally the most, he hasn’t changed anything technically. He’s just taught me a different mental approach, to be more aggressive and to hit the deck hard.

“Lance and I have just clicked, he understands what I need to fire and he presses the right buttons,” Abbott said.

While pace and aggression are definitely there, the most impressive aspect of Abbott’s bowling was his probing line just on or about off stump.  With the occasional delivery standing up as well, the rookie was in charge from the moment he had Mohammad Hafeez caught in the gully off the last ball of his first over.

After having Pakistan captain Misbah ul-Haq brilliantly caught in the slips by Alviro Petersen, Abbott had two for 16 from six overs at tea, which the visitors took on 91 for four.

The Pakistanis never recovered from Dale Steyn trapping Asad Shafiq lbw for six in the first over after the break, with Abbott piling on further misery for the tourists by removing Sarfraz Ahmed (17) and Saeed Ajmal, both caught at first slip by Graeme Smith, with successive deliveries.

Ehsan Adil (9) then edged Abbott to third slip and the Sunfoil Series’ leading wickettaker then added the wickets of Mohammad Irfran (0) and Younis Khan (33) to finish with the ninth best debut figures in Test history.

South Africa captain Smith then forced Pakistan to follow-on – to show how positive he is and how much faith he has in his bowling attack – and there was immediate reward as Mohammad Hafeez edged Dale Steyn’s first ball into his stumps.

Azhar Ali (5*) and Younis (8*) then took Pakistan through to stumps on 14 for one.

South Africa’s weakened pace attack had already shown that they meant business as they reduced Pakistan to 91 for four at tea on the second day.

South Africa were right on top, having scored 409 in their first innings after De Villiers’ superb century and strong support from Vernon Philander had considerably boosted their innings from 248 for six.

Resuming on nine without loss after lunch, Hafeez and Imran Farhat looked on their way to just the second half-century opening partnership against South Africa this summer as they reached 46 without loss after 16 overs.

Ed Cowan and David Warner of Australia had been the only other opening pair to prosper as they put on 77 in Adelaide in November.

But the seventh delivery of Philander’s first spell from the West Lane End pitched on middle-and-off and straightened, trapping Farhat lbw for 30 as the left-hander tried to play around the front pad.

The aggressive Farhat had faced 60 balls and hit three fours, but the slips were always interested when he was at the crease.

The next over saw Abbott bowl the first over of his international career. The first ball was too straight and tucked through square-leg for four with the sweetest of timing by Azhar.

The 25-year-old Abbott thereafter settled on a steady line just outside off stump and, being tall, he occasionally obtained steep bounce, making it a risk for the Pakistan batsmen to attack him.

Hafeez did try at the end of his first over and was cramped as the ball nipped back into him, and the catch went low to gully, where it was well-taken by Dean Elgar.

Hafeez had survived for 85 minutes and 44 balls, and scored 18.

Both openers were out within 11 balls of each other and worse was to follow when Philander removed Azhar (6) with the next delivery.

Azhar was conned by a delivery that kept low outside off stump, edging the ball back into his stumps. Although it is not a pitch batsmen can fully trust, it was a lame stroke by Azhar, hanging a limp bat out to dry.

The West Lane End was giving Abbott steep bounce and that’s what undid Misbah ul-Haq, who provided the slips with an edge as he was squared-up. Alviro Petersen dived low in front of first slip to take a great catch and the Pakistan captain was back in the hut for 10.

Younis had been in for almost an hour when tea arrived, but had scored just 13, while Asad Shafiq was with him on two not out.

Philander had taken two for 21 in seven overs and Abbott two for 16 in six, while Rory Kleinveldt, wicketless in eight overs, had been most unfortunate in his first spell.

He beat the bat several times and seemed to have trapped Farhat in front on 27, only for Hawkeye to say the ball pitched outside leg-stump. It merely added more fuel to the fire for those who don’t have complete faith in DRS’s ball-tracking abilities.

The morning belonged to De Villiers and Philander.

It’s becoming apparent that De Villiers is maintaining his brilliant batting form despite having to keep wicket as well, while Robin Peterson and now Philander have made crucial contributions down the order in successive Tests.

South Africa had resumed on their overnight score of 334 for six, with De Villiers on 98 not out, and his second scoring stroke, another classical drive through the covers, brought him three runs and his 16th Test century. It came off 186 balls and included 13 wonderful strokes to the boundary.

Just a ball later, Pakistan had one of two chances to strike an early blow but fluffed it as Philander edged a drive at Rahat Ali which wicketkeeper Sarfraz Ahmed dived for but could not reach, while first slip Hafeez hesitated.

Philander was obviously going to play his shots on Saturday morning and he went to his second Test half-century off 85 balls and made it to 74, a career-best, before Younis proved the surprise package and had him caught low down by Hafeez at first slip.

De Villiers continued to score freely, going to 121 off 215 deliveries, with 15 fours, before he chased after a short-pitched delivery from Rahat and Shafiq took a very well judged catch on the midwicket boundary.

South Africa were all out four overs later as Rahat claimed his fifth and sixth wickets, removing Kleinveldt (0) and Abbott, the debutant who showed some ability with the bat in scoring 13. The straight drive he hit off Rahat for his only boundary was the shot of the morning.

Rahat was the most successful of the Pakistan bowlers, the Centurion pitch providing him with just enough nibble, while the ball also swung for him, and the 24-year-old who entered the Test scene at the Wanderers finished with six for 127 in 27.2 overs.

The debutant, Ehsan Adil, was unable to bowl on the second morning due to the calf injury that took him off the field shortly before the close of play on the first day, so the visitors were grateful for the penetration Rahat provided.