Ken Borland

SUN CITY, North-West (13 October) – Ockie Strydom is the owner of 37 top-10 finishes on the Sunshine Tour and was the runner-up at the Gary Player Country Club in the 2019 Sun City Challenge, so it is never too surprising to see him at the top of the leaderboard as he was after the first round of the Blue Label Challenge at the famous 7831-yard course on Wednesday.

In a tournament using a modified Stableford scoring system, Strydom shot a wonderful seven-under-par 65, his eight birdies and just one bogey giving him a total of 15 points. That left the 36-year-old one point ahead of Ruan Korb (66), while Jayden Schaper and Rhys Enoch also shot six-under-par but finished on 13 points because they did not have an eagle on their cards, as Korb did on the par-five 11^th.

Strydom’s solitary bogey came on the first hole, and he stayed on minus-one points through the next four holes, but thereafter the Serengeti golfer found the conditions and very warm temperatures much to his liking with three successive birdies from the sixth hole. He was especially potent on the back nine, where he collected five birdies.

“On the first hole I hit two in the bush and I thought ‘here we go!’. But I kept calm and then I changed my ball after five holes because that one wasn’t really working. I then got a lucky bounce on the sixth green and I just started making birdies,” Strydom said. “I was hitting it nicely off the tee, finding the fairways and then hitting my irons quite close. The putting then works out itself.”

Strydom is known to be a big hitter off the tee and, with summer rains having arrived in the Pilanesberg, the fact that there is not as much run on the fairways as in winter has suited him.

“Most of the previous events here have been in winter, when the ball really runs on the fairways. But now it’s softer, it feels a club or two longer that normal. But I like that because it means not everyone can attack the greens from long distance. They are very soft greens though and the ball either comes back or stops dead,” Strydom said.

The man who made his breakthrough win at the 2019 Vodacom Origins of Golf Series event at Sishen has enjoyed a solid season and is 30^th on the Order of Merit. His tee-to-green work has been consistent, and now, as the big money co-sanctioned events loom, his putter has started coming to life.

“I was a bit off at the beginning of the season, slowly getting better and I have not struggled from tee-to-green in the last six months. My putting was a bit of a problem though and my coach Doug Wood has been working very hard at it. I’m starting to get more comfortable with the process,” Strydom said.

Toto Thimba Junior has returned from his bucket-list trip to St Andrews for the Dunhill Links Championship in fine fettle and he shot a four-under-par 68 for 11 points.

Welshman Enoch has also returned to the Sunshine Tour, for the first time since winning the KitKat Group Pro-Am in March, and has come off an up-and-down European Tour campaign. But he looked in excellent touch on Wednesday, his only dropped shot coming on the par-five 18^th, which was his ninth hole.

Scores – https://sunshinetour.com/tournament-information/?tourn=BLCH&season=221S&report=tmentry~season=221S~alphaorder~#/home

The Springboks are finally home after spending 14 weeks in a bio-secure bubble, having restored their pride with their epic win over the All Blacks in the last Rugby Championship Test, having pushed them to the brink in the previous match.

The world champions are also back at number one in the WorldRugby rankings, a quite remarkable achievement when one considers that, having not played since winning the World Cup in November 2019, they had to play the might of the British and Irish Lions and four Tests away from home against top three sides New Zealand and Australia.

The Springboks certainly deserve their rest now, until the end-of-year tour to the United Kingdom at the end of the month. Of course, half the team that beat New Zealand last weekend will already be heading off to the Northern Hemisphere, because they play for overseas clubs.

There are also, of course, four South African teams currently in Wales and Scotland, playing in the United Rugby Championship. Starting that tough new challenge away from home has been a bridge too far for the South African franchises with just one win from eight matches so far.

The struggles in the URC have further justified Springbok director of rugby Rassie Erasmus’s decision to look to the Northern Hemisphere for the bulk of the national squad, due to the poor state of the local game. For those who have been involved in South African rugby for a while, there are definite parallels with when we returned from isolation in 1992.

It took a while for the Springboks to adapt to where the game had moved on to, and the input of two overseas-educated coaches in Ian McIntosh and Kitch Christie.

We can blame Covid for the recent isolation that meant no international competition for our domestic teams for nearly 20 months.

This has been exacerbated by the talent-drain from these shores to those self-same European teams that has been going on for several years now. This means we are currently trying to find our feet in a new competition, overseas, against some of the leading clubs in the world, with weakened teams who have been denied international competition for more than a year-and-a-half.

The damage done by the talent-drain and Covid to our game seems to have been underestimated in many quarters, and this is reason enough to be a little patient when it comes to expecting our four franchises to contend with the top URC teams.

The size of the fight in the dog is going to have to come to the fore over the next fortnight, because matching the skills that the European teams are executing at high tempo is not just going to happen overnight.

Tempo and skill-set are two factors that have dogged our local rugby players for a while, which explains why the Springboks choose so many overseas-based players, and even then use something of a dumbed-down game-plan to ensure success.

This is not to say we don’t have skilful players. Just think of Lukhanyo Am and his ridiculous behind-the-back, reverse-flip pass to set up the first try last weekend, or Cheslin Kolbe and how we missed his dazzling feet. Elton Jantjies stamped his mark on the final minutes against the All Blacks by showcasing his excellent skills as well, and Lood de Jager is a lineout practitioner of great expertise.

But they are the outliers and one can only praise Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber for his pragmatism in recognising not just the strengths of his team, but also their weaknesses, and building his strategy around that.

Lizo Gqoboka’s face is an ever-smiling one, but if one had to offer the Bulls prop a penny for his thoughts after their loss to Connacht last weekend, he would have told you about his bitter disappointment, even though he scored a try and put in a stout individual performance.

“It was a tough one. I was happy about the try, but we lost the game so actually I was not happy. The team comes first and I can never be happy when we lose,” Gqoboka said this week as the Bulls try to rectify the mistakes they made in their 34-7 loss to Connacht ahead of their United Rugby Championship match against the Cardiff Blues on Saturday night.

“There are a couple of things we need to adjust to, mostly the conditions and the tempo. These European sides play differently and they are accurate in their execution.”

“We need to adjust and learn really quickly how to counter that tempo. But the focus is on ourselves and making sure we continue improving. Our attitude as Bulls is not to complain, but to adapt and grow.

“We always look at ourselves and even the guys who came on in the second half continued to fight and showed character. If we continue to improve than good results are on the way,” Gqoboka said.

While the match against Connacht was played in the old-fashioned venue of the Galway Greyhound Stadium (capacity 8129), which is open and allows the elements to take full force, the Bulls will be playing Cardiff on the high-tech 4G, artificial turf pitch at the Arms Park.

Bulls scrumhalf Zak Burger is a man who knows about playing in small venues missing the finer touches of a place like Loftus Versfeld as he moved to Pretoria from Griquas. He is looking forward to showing a bit more daring in better conditions for running rugby.

“A couple of times in Kimberley we would have a 40km/h wind in that open stadium and it made it very difficult in certain corners. Connacht used the wind really well last week in the second half and put us under big pressure.

“But as a scrumhalf I enjoy this 4G pitch in Cardiff a lot, you feel like you are running lighter, it’s nice to play on. I don’t know what the weather will be like on Saturday, but I hope it’s okay.

“We must use the conditions more and we are not far off, we’re getting our entries into the 22. But in the Currie Cup, where you get 10 chances and take five, in this competition you only get four and you have to take them all.

“If it’s wet and windy then we will have to kick more and we can’t run from our 22. We will have to put pressure on them with more tactical kicking. We need to play good rugby and attack where the space is,” Burger said.

All Blacks coach Ian Foster gave the Springboks their due after the world champions had edged out the new No.1 side in the rankings 31-29 in their thrilling Rugby Championship Test on the Gold Coast on Saturday, while South African coach Jacques Nienaber was delighted with the belief his side showed and the improvement in their play.

Like the previous match between the two powerhouses, it took a penalty at the death to decide an epic encounter, but Foster was fulsome in his praise of their conquerors.

“It was a massive arm-wrestle, South Africa were superb, they came with huge attitude, carried hard and moved us around. They had a very strong third quarter and got us a bit flustered, but I was very proud with how we got back,” Foster said.

“Then we just lost a bit of discipline in the last two minutes. We just weren’t as accurate as we needed to be at one ruck and we were beaten in that moment.

“We were up against a foe whose playing style we know can suffocate you, we showed we can deal with it, but we need to deal with it for longer periods.

“We got a bit muddled in the third quarter and in the last quarter we struggled to play with ball-in-hand in their half, but we hung tough. It was a tough old game and the Springboks probably played their best game today.”

Nienaber also pointed to the result being decided by a couple of decisive moments.

“The margins between one and three in the world are so small, last weekend against New Zealand and in the first Test against Australia we lost in the last plays of the game, but this weekend fortunately we got the opportunity to win.

“We’re not at our 2019 level yet, the balance in our game was a bit better today, but we’re not there yet,” Nienaber said.

“The players never doubted, they never lost focus although there was a lot of white noise and justified criticism after the second Test against Australia.

“They never veered off what we are trying to do. But the margins are so small, one misread and you can get punished, and this week we got the last call of the game. We try to take the emotion out of it and look at ourselves objectively.”

That being said, the Springboks did manage to sheal themselves out of their shells a bit on attack, their ball-in-hand skills being highlighted by a moment of handling magic by Lukhanyo Am that led to their first try and will be celebrated everywhere in South Africa from a hut on an Eastern Cape hillside to a luxury North Coast beach house.

Replacement flyhalf Elton Jantjies produced a top-class display of how to finish a game, a lovely pass helping wing Makazole Mapimpi score, followed by a fine drop goal to go with a couple of penalties.

“We had opportunities like this against Australia and last week, closing the game and getting the result, we’ve been in that position.

“The coach encourages us to take opportunities if we see them and we just tried to stay aligned in the last five minutes when a lot happened. We showed our belief and executed our plan,” Jantjies said.