Ken Borland

It’s been an eventful and testing year for Australian golfer Marc Leishman, but he had the energy to end it on a high and claim the biggest paycheque of his career in winning the Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City by six strokes on Sunday.

With home favourite Jaco van Zyl tumbling down the leaderboard – despite eagling the second he slumped to a six-over-par 78 – Leishman’s only challenger in the final round was world number seven Henrik Stenson, who had overcome severe flu to lead the first two rounds.

But after some early struggles, Leishman’s precise iron play took the wind out of Stenson’s sails, with the 2008 champion only managing to post a level-par 72 in stifling heat as the eventual winner produced some superb golf with six birdies in the last 12 holes.

Leishman began the year ranked 46^th in the world after top-10 finishes in the Open and two World Golf Championships events in 2014, but his early season was severely disrupted by his wife Audrey suffering from acute respiratory distress syndrome, going into toxic shock and only being given a 5% chance of survival.

Happily she made it through and Leishman played in the Open Championship in July and lost out in the playoff with winner Zach Johnson and South African Louis Oosthuizen.

“I’ve been pretty happy to get this year over with, obviously with Audrey being very sick and I lost an uncle who was very close to me. The Open was very good but disappointing, so this win tops off the year for me. It’s pretty great, an awesome feeling and I’m very happy. It’s the biggest paycheque I’ve ever won so I’ll have to hang it on the wall of our new house,” a delighted Leishman said after he became just the second Australian to win the Nedbank Golf Challenge after Robert Allenby, who beat Stenson in a playoff in 2009.

With the demise of Van Zyl confirmed on the ninth, where he three-putted for bogey to add to the double-bogey he had on the sixth and another dropped shot on eight, the recipient of the $1.25 million winner’s cheque was obviously going to be either Leishman or Stenson.

But Leishman spun a sand-wedge back to within a few inches of the hole for birdie on the par-four 13^th and the final nail in the coffin was hammered in when he birdied the 15^th from 15 feet and Stenson made bogey after a wayward drive meant he had to chip out of thick bush.

Another birdie on the par-three 16^th and two pars coming in meant Leishman completed the round of the day with his 67.

“Henrik is an awesome player who I knew could come back with five birdies in nine holes and two or three up is not that many over nine holes on this course. I knew that trouble waited on every shot and you don’t need to hit that bad a shot to get bogey here. It was probably only after the putt on 16 that I knew I would have to do something really dumb to lose it, but fortunately I was able to be more conservative,” Leishman said.

There was relief and anger in the halls of Loftus Versfeld on Saturday night as the Bulls edged past the Sharks 43-35 to claim their first Vodacom SuperRugby win of the season, but in controversial fashion.

It was a much-improved display by the Bulls, especially in terms of a much lower error-rate, the intensity of their forwards and the fluidity of their attacking play, but their character was tested as the Sharks overturned a 22-33 deficit on the hour mark to lead 35-33 with eight minutes remaining.

In the end it was the Bulls who were celebrating not only a victory, but also a four-try bonus point.

For the Sharks, however, there was nothing but anger, most of it directed at TMO Johan Greeff, whose abysmal decision to award the opening try to the Bulls after a blatant forward pass must surely go down in the halls of shame for South African officiating.

“We’ve had a directive that we’re not allowed to comment publically when we’re massively disappointed about the performance of the officials, so I’m not going to comment,” was Sharks coach Gary Gold’s clever way of expressing his disgust.

The Francois Hougaard try in the 25^th minute was an inexplicable error but the Sharks also felt hard done by when Greeff disallowed  a 66^th-minute dot-down after Odwa Ndungane was ruled to have knocked-on in leaping for a Pat Lambie cross-kick, and then allowed Jan Serfontein’s injury-time try that gave the Bulls a bonus point and denied the Sharks one.

“We’re told there was no clear evidence for an obvious forward pass and then Odwa gets called for a knock-on where the evidence wasn’t clear either. All we want is consistency,” Gold said.

There were only a handful of scrums in the game, but the Bulls won the set-piece battle thanks to the towering presence of Victor Matfield in the lineouts, and flank Lappies Labuschagne was an immense presence both in defence and carrying the ball.

Scrumhalf Rudi Paige then used the front-foot ball crisply and intelligently.

“We had quality possession and we squeezed them in the lineout, but it was a huge team effort. One of Rudi Paige’s strengths is that he allows others to play off him, he has good decision-making and it was great to see him make a huge difference. Lappies was also outstanding and is forming a great combination with Deon Stegmann and Pierre Spies, the balance is there,” Bulls coach Frans Ludeke said.

The Bulls front row, who managed to largely avoid a potentially awkward scrum contest due to there being fewer errors, were also pillars of the defensive effort and the strong driving play of the home side.

“It was an outstanding performance to cope with that pressure, it was great that we kept our composure although we went behind, and we always knew we had this in us. We were also more accurate at the breakdowns, which were a huge contest, and the players responded to Pierre because he led by example,” Ludeke said.

Captain Spies acknowledged that “a few 50/50s went our way compared to the last two weeks” and that the team would enjoy the win but would have to “stay balanced and focused”.

Albie Morkel produced one of the great innings in a final as his phenomenal unbeaten century took the Unlimited Titans to a five-wicket win with 17 balls to spare over the Nashua Cape Cobras to claim the Momentum One-Day Cup title at Newlands last night.

Morkel finished with an exceptional 134 not out off just 103 balls, making his first List A century when it really counted. The powerful left-hander took his time to get settled, before he and fellow centurion Dean Elgar turned what looked like a procession for the Cobras into a horror defeat.

Richard Levi had scored 104 off 113 balls to lead the Cobras to a commanding 285 for eight after they chose to bat first and there seemed little hope of a Titans win when the visitors slumped to 60 for four in the 15^th over.

But Elgar (100) and Morkel added a magnificent, record-breaking 195 and even though Elgar’s 119-ball innings came to an end when he mistimed a pull off Rory Kleinveldt when 31 runs were still required, Morkel did not stand on ceremony and rushed the Titans home in a blaze of boundaries.

Morkel hit eight fours and seven sixes and seemed to succeed with every stroke he played; not only was he in the zone, but his reading of the match situation was superb and his ability to remain composed under pressure was impressive.

Elgar’s century was his second in succession after his match-winning effort in the playoff and the gritty left-hander has become a master of pacing a limited-overs innings.

Levi and Puttick put on 180 off 198 balls for the Cobras’ first wicket and the home side looked on course for well over 300.

But Tabraiz Shamsi produced a super display of controlled wrist-spin to slow their progress, trapping Levi leg-before as the Cobras scored just 115 runs in the last 20 overs.

Puttick was run out for 69 but there was little intent from the other Cobras’ batsmen before Dane Vilas lifted them to a competitive, if ultimately disappointing total with his 40 off 25 balls.

Kleinveldt and off-spinner Sybrand Engelbrecht dented the Titans’ ambitions with a couple of wickets each, but the brilliance of Morkel and Elgar gradually saw the Cobras’ confidence melt away.

Ross Fisher and George Coetzee each played the first 15 holes of the Nedbank Golf Challenge without dropping a shot, but it was Englishman Fisher who nailed two successive birdies to claim a two-stroke lead in the first round at Sun City on Thursday.

Fisher, tall and athletic, could be a poster-boy for elegant golf and he produced high-quality iron play and deft putting to move to a brilliant seven-under-par.

Coetzee is more on the burly side but he matched Fisher through 10 holes with five birdies, but thereafter found himself scrambling for pars more than he was putting for birdies.

Brooks Koepka of the United States and Frenchman Alexander Levy will also fancy their chances of finishing high up on the first-round leaderboard as they moved to four-under-par through 14 holes.

South African Charl Schwartzel will be pleased that he has managed to collect five birdies, to offset two bogeys, while struggling with his swing and will be a force to be reckoned with if he continues to improve.

Defending champion Thomas Bjorn raced out of the blocks with a birdie at the first hole, but a double-bogey and two bogeys on the front nine, plus two more dropped shots on the back nine has seen him quickly plummet to the lower reaches of the leaderboard on five-over-par.

Seven golfers were on two-under – veteran Miguel Angel Jimenez, Brooks Koepka, South Africans Tim Clark and Louis Oosthuizen, Jonas Blixt, Marcel Siem and Stephen Gallacher.

Both Coetzee and Fisher relied on precision iron play as they vaulted into the lead around the turn with a pair of birdies on the par-five ninth and 10th holes.

Thailand’s Kiridech Aphibarnrat had provided plenty of entertainment for the Sun City spectators as he claimed an early share of the lead when he played the first five holes in three-under-par, with four birdies and a bogey, but bogeys on the ninth, 14th and 16th holes saw him fall back. Coetzee claimed birdies on the first three holes to provide early cheer for those hoping for a first South African winner of the Nedbank Golf Challenge since Trevor Immelman in 2007.

The opening holes of the European Tour event held few worries for the golfers as Joost Luiten, Dawie van der Walt, Gallacher and Danny Willett all picked up an early brace of birdies.

Van der Walt, in the field by virtue of winning the 2013 Sunshine Tour Order of Merit, made the fastest start of all by birdieing the first hole and then chipping in for eagle on the 520m par-five second, but he could not pick up any more shots on the next three holes, dropping a stroke on the par-three fourth after finding the greenside bunker and then leaving his chip way past the hole. Three successive bogeys from the 15th hole then left him well off the pace.

A disastrous triple-bogey seven at the 11th saw Luiten slump to over-par for his round.

Clark, who teed off in the first group, set the early pace with birdies at the first two holes, but he then lost his way with a bogey at the fifth and a double-bogey at the tricky par-four eighth, before getting back under par with birdies at the 10th and 11th holes. He completed a solid two-under-par 70 with a superb 30-foot putt for birdie from off the green on the last hole.

The conditions at Sun City were close to perfect, a slight breeze helping to offset the heat, and the golfers took advantage with 13 of them under par.

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