Ken Borland

Ross Fisher celebrates victory for the first time in nearly four years

A top-class display of patient golf saw Ross Fisher claim a three-stroke victory in the European Tour/Sunshine Tour co-sanctioned Tshwane Open at the Els Club Copperleaf on Sunday.

Fisher began the final day with a five-shot lead but had to endure an impressive challenge from Northern Irishman Michael Hoey and also some pressure from Spaniard Carlos del Moral before posting a two-under-par 70 to finish on 20-under-par and claim a fifth European Tour victory after a winning drought of nearly four years.

The Englishman laboured around the front nine in one-under 35, his iron play and putting lacking the brilliant sharpness of the previous two days, and Hoey closed to within a stroke after sinking a 25-foot birdie putt on the 11^th hole, to follow up an eagle on the par-five fourth and birdies at the first and eighth holes.

But Hoey then saw his approach shot on the par-four 12^th slide into the water hazard protecting the green, leading to a double-bogey, and he eventually finished with a 68 to trail Fisher by three strokes.

Del Moral twice closed to within two shots of Fisher, but erred crucially with bogeys on the 14^th and 17^th holes, finishing alone in fourth place on 16-under.

Young South African Danie van Tonder produced the round of the day with a 66 to finish tied in second place with Hoey, taking R1.7 million from his best-ever finish on the summer tour.

Fisher sealed victory on the 578-metre 15^th hole when he rolled in a superb eagle putt from 20 feet to give him a four-shot lead.

“I was 263 metres from the pin after a real good drive and then I really ripped a hybrid, probably the flushest I’ve hit for a long time. That was a massive turning point, I couldn’t buy a putt before that, and then I didn’t have to push any more, I didn’t have to take driver coming in,” Fisher said after his triumph.

“I knew patience would be the biggest thing today, just hitting the green and making the other guys get birdies. And Mike hitting into the water on 12 was also a big thing, it gave me a breather,” the 33-year-old said.

Fisher also had to handle the additional challenges posed by almost-continual rain and then a blustery wind.

“The weather wasn’t kind and it wasn’t quite the fireworks and spectacular golf I hoped for. The eagle on four by Mike really pushed me, but I felt like I was giving myself chances and the birdie on seven was a very good one, there were many bogeys there today. I then felt I had some shots to spare because the back nine has been very kind to me,” he said.

The 2010 Ryder Cup player is now back into the top 65 on the world rankings and closer to his goal of making the top 50 and once again competing in the majors and the famous team event between Europe and the United States.

Behind the impressive Van Tonder, Hennie Otto, the 2011 SA Open champion, was the next best South African, a 68 in the final round leaving him alone in fifth place on 15-under.

http://citizen.co.za/136519/fisher-claims-three-stroke-victory-tshwane-open/

Englishman Ross Fisher stretched his lead to five strokes as he fired a five-under-par 67 in the third round of the European Tour/Sunshine Tour co-sanctioned Tshwane Open at the Els Club Copperleaf on Saturday.

Fisher had started the penultimate day with just a one-shot lead over Morten Orum Madsen, and two ahead of Simon Dyson and Carlos del Moral, but the 2010 Ryder Cup player birdied the sixth, seventh and ninth holes to reach the turn in 33 and then collected two more birdies on the back nine as he took firm control of the R22.3 million tournament.

The 33-year-old will go into the final round on 18-under-par, with his nearest challengers being Northern Irishman Michael Hoey on 13-under, Dyson and Del Moral on 12-under and seven golfers on 11-under, including South Africans Merrick Bremner, Hennie Otto, Danie van Tonder, Trevor Fisher Junior and Darren Fichardt.

On a wet, miserable day, no one was really able to make a move on Fisher, with compatriot Robert Rock’s seven-under-par 65 the best round of the day and that moved him into a tie for 12^th on 10-under.

Madsen, who won the South African Open in Johannesburg in November, unravelled badly and his round was like a disaster movie, finishing with three successive bogeys to leave him on nine-under for the tournament, nine strokes behind Fisher, and in a tie for 15^th.

Fisher, who began his third round with two bogeys in his first five holes, said his aim in the final round would be to produce birdies and thereby eliminate the threat of the sort of exciting come-from-behind charge the promoters of the tournament would love.

“Five shots is a nice lead, but I expect good scores behind me in the final round, especially if the weather is hot and sunny. So I’ll be aiming to shoot in the 60s again, I’ll play aggressively and make as many birdies as possible. In that way I’ll put heat on the others and they’ll have to shoot something silly to catch me,” Fisher said after his third-successive sub-68 round.

Fisher, a prodigious driver of the ball, has overcome the longest course in European Tour history with his excellence off the tee and some brilliant long-iron play, hitting 86% of the greens in regulation. When he errs, he knows his short game is good enough to make up for it, as shown by fine up-and-downs on the 14^th and 18^th holes.

Hoey managed to maintain the momentum from his second round, in which he collected seven successive birdies on the back nine, to shoot a 69 on Friday and climb even further up the leaderboard.

“I kept my rhythm well from yesterday and I was able to tap into those seven birdies in a row. The course is long and wet, and I was very happy with my putting.

“I had a couple of sloppy swings and misjudgements, but it’s easier to accept those when you’re putting well and scoring well,” Hoey said after his round that included three bogeys and six birdies.

Both Dyson and Del Moral struggled to get going on Saturday, shooting one-under-par 71s, and Fisher is clearly going to be extremely hard to beat in the final round.

“I’m playing as good as ever, similar to when I contended in the majors, and my goal is to get back into the top 50 in the world – I feel I belong there. To win here would be a massive confidence boost and a step in the right direction,” Fisher said.

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Trevor Fisher Junior on his way to seven-under

Late starters Simon Dyson and Trevor Fisher Junior claimed the first-round lead of the European Tour/Sunshine Tour co-sanctioned Tshwane Open at the Els Club Copperleaf on Thursday after a weather-curtailed opening round.

Dyson, teeing off at midday in match 29 of 39 to go off the first tee, staged a spectacular finish to his round as he collected four successive birdies to post a seven-under-par 65.

Fisher Junior teed off 50 minutes later and his round was suspended by a large storm that arrived at Copperleaf at 5.30pm, but the South African had already moved to seven-under-par through 16 holes by then.

Both Fisher Junior and Englishman Dyson played bogey-free rounds.

Earlier in the day, South Africans Jared Harvey and Erik van Rooyen, and Englishman Ross Fisher had claimed a share of the early lead with 66s, before being overtaken by Dyson and Fisher Junior.

South Africans Darren Fichardt, through 17 holes, and Danie van Tonder were also on six-under-par when play was called off for the day.

South African Open champion Morten Orum Madsen was in a six-man group on five-under-par, having eagled the par-four seventh hole and then picking up a second eagle on the par-five 15^th when he hit his approach shot stone-dead. The Dane was about to hit his second shot on the 18^th hole when play was suspended.

Dyson, a six-time European Tour winner, credited his fine round to his ability to recover from lost causes.

“It was a really nice finish, set up by three really good up-and-downs on the three previous holes. On 15 and 16 I also managed to get up-and-down from near the green for birdies and it’s my lowest round for a few years,” Dyson said.

The 36-year-old is also on the comeback trail after a European Tour disciplinary hearing ruled in December that he had been guilty of a deliberate but un-premeditated breach of the rules when he was disqualified from the BMW Masters in Shanghai in October for illegally tapping down a spike mark before he putted. He was fined £30,000 and given a two-month suspended ban, but he admitted there were times when he feared his professional golfing career was dead.

“Today’s round definitely shows I’m in a good state of mind. The controversy gave me my love of the game back, there was a chance it was going to be taken away from me. It made me knuckle down and really enjoy the game again, which isn’t bad in my 14^th year on tour,” Dyson said.

Young Van Rooyen, who turned pro last year after playing American college golf for the University of Minnesota, led the qualifiers into the tournament with a 66, and he repeated that score on Thursday, although he admitted the strain of pre-qualifying for every tournament was taking its toll.

“The qualifiers are tough, it’s like a sprint because you only have one round. And then the actual tournament is like a marathon straight afterwards. You’re so happy and pumped that you’ve qualified, but then you have to re-set so you don’t lose focus on the first day. I am getting tired, I won’t lie, it’s quite a lot of pressure and a lot of golf,” Van Rooyen said.

But winning a co-sanctioned event changes lives and Van Rooyen is in line to not have to worry about qualifying any more.

Ross Fisher, number 82 in the world and the second-highest ranked golfer in the field, is lurking dangerously just one shot back and, ominously, says he feels quite comfortable playing in South Africa.

“My game feels in good shape and I don’t know what it is, I just enjoy playing down here and I seem to play quite well. The long game still feels like it’s there and if I can hole a few more putts then I think there will be some really low scores from me,” the 2010 Ryder Cup player said.

George Coetzee, the highest-ranked golfer in the field in 53^rd place, is in a tie for 36^th after shooting a 70, while defending champion Dawie van der Walt is in trouble on five-over-par through 15 holes.

http://www.thenewage.co.za/119857-18-53-Dyson_and_Fisher_share_Tshwane_open_lead

The sheer length of the Els Club Copperleaf course will be the most obvious challenge for the 156 golfers teeing it up from Thursday in the European Tour/Sunshine Tour co-sanctioned Tshwane Open.

At 7281 metres, Copperleaf is the longest course in European Tour history, superseding the 7175 metres of the Ritz Carlton Golf Club which hosted the World Golf Championship Accenture Matchplay Championship from 2009-2011.

While the views of the professionals were varied, one man who is certainly not afraid of the distance is defending champion Dawie van der Walt.

“I think it’s fun to play a course like this. It’s long and everything, but it’s not tough. If it was tight, it would be a different story, but the fairways are pretty generous, so if you hit driver well, it’s not all that bad, you’ll hit a lot of mid-irons,” Van der Walt said on Wednesday.

Van der Walt claimed the first major tour title of his journeyman career in the inaugural edition of the Tshwane Open last year and has since won the Nelson Mandela Championship at Mount Edgecombe and the Sunshine Tour Order of Merit, but he is far from being the top-ranked player in the field.

That honour goes to George Coetzee, number 53 on the world rankings and the winner of the Joburg Open three weeks ago. The 27-year-old from Pretoria believes the tournament will be decided off the tees and on the greens.

“I really like this golf course, it suits me. It’s kind of a bomber’s track and then a putting contest, and those are the two parts of my game that I work on the most and I’m probably best at. It should be good fun,” Coetzee said.

Darren Fichardt, the 2013 Sunshine Tour Players’ Player of the Year, and Jaco van Zyl, the 13-time local tour winner, will also be amongst the favourites, but there are many overseas golfers eager for victory.

Perhaps the most dangerous of them will be Denmark’s Morten Orum Madsen.

At the end of last July, Madsen was ranked only 231^st in the world but he came to these shores in the summer and won the South African Open, leading to a steady rise up the rankings to his current 115^th spot.

“ This course suits my game very well, long with undulating greens. You need to be sharp with your approach shots and putt well and those long par-fives are good for me.

“It was great to get my first win in a tournament like the South African Open, you feel the fire and you want more. I’ve grown in confidence, I know the game is there and I know I can compete. If I play as well as I can, then I know I can win. That gives you a great sense of calmness and no fear,” Madsen said.

But the likes of Englishmen Ross Fisher, Chris Wood, Tommy Fleetwood, David Howell and Danny Willett, and Frenchman Romain Wattel, cannot be barred from contention either, with all of them ranked in the top 115 in the world.

As Van der Walt showed last year in cracking the Copperleaf code, finding the fairways off the tee and precise long-iron play will be key when the seventh and final co-sanctioned event of the summer gets underway.

“From all the rain over the last couple of weeks, the ball’s not rolling. It’s just pitching and stopping dead, so you’re playing very long holes. It’s going to be quite demanding on your long-iron play and also obviously on your chipping and putting,” Fichardt said.

With a heavy storm hitting Copperleaf on Wednesday afternoon, the challenge has become even tougher.

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