Ken Borland

PRETORIA, Gauteng – Albert Venter led by four strokes after the first round of the SunBet Challenge hosted by Time Square Casino at the Wingate Park Country Club and the 26-year-old ensured he kept the door closed on his rivals in Thursday’s second round as he posted a solid three-under-par 69 to stretch that advantage to five strokes.

Venter will head into the final round on 12-under-par for the tournament, having shot a brilliant 63 in the first round.

There was a blustery wind in Pretoria on Thursday, just the sort of conditions in which a golfer could blow a lead on the hard and fast greens of Wingate Park, and Venter began his round cautiously, being level-par, with a birdie and a bogey, through his first eight holes.

But he was then able to tear around the turn with three birdies in the next four holes. Six straight pars coming in on the front nine completed a round which could only be considered a success.

“The wind picked up a lot today so my first few holes were not too bad. It was definitely trickier today to figure out which way it was blowing. Because the course is tree-lined, it swirls around a bit,” Venter said.

“There were quite difficult decisions to make over which irons to play. But we predicted the wind would pick up and the plan was to get my score as low as possible to build a bit of a cushion.

“Thankfully I kept my head in the game and managed to get a decent score. I can’t control what the other golfers do, but I am in a really good position,” Venter said.

On a hard day to shoot a really low score, Estiaan Conradie (69) and Jean Hugo (68) have done really well to position themselves as Venter’s closest challengers, on seven-under-par.

Luke Brown produced the round of the day, a 66 that included seven birdies to join Ruan Korb (70) on six-under for the tournament.

Venter won the Zimbabwe Open in May for his maiden Sunshine Tour title and will be able to learn from that experience in Friday’s final round.

“The big thing about winning is trying to get into those positions more and more, trying to get used to the atmosphere and nerves you face on the final day,” the Silver Lakes golfer said.

“I’ve been in quite a few situations like that in the last few years, although I wouldn’t say I’m experienced. But I’ve been in the situation before and I know how to deal with the nerves and the adrenaline.

“I can’t get ahead of myself, I have to stay patient and stick to my guns,” Venter said.

Danie van Tonder continued to provide free tuition out on the golf course to his fellow Sunshine Tour pros on the art of winning as he claimed the Vodacom Championship Reloaded title by four strokes at Huddle Park on Friday, his third trophy in the five-event Rise Up Series.

It has been an extraordinary run of form for the 29-year-old, Van Tonder becoming the first player to win three times in one Sunshine Tour season since Oliver Bekker in 2017, and he has certainly learnt how to win with something that is now approaching monotonous regularity.

Going into the final round at Huddle Park with a three-stroke lead after a 40-foot eagle on his last hole in he second round, Van Tonder immediately took control on Friday with a birdie at the par-four first hole. An eagle on the sixth and a birdie on the ninth, the two par-fives, completed the perfect front nine when leading, and he ended the round with a six-under 66, playing immaculate, bogey-free golf.

“Everyone wants to try and win every time they play, I wanted to win five-out-of-five, but it’s very hard in this profession. But I had to teach myself the right mentality on the course, I do get cross but now I try to use that to my advantage, hitting the ball further and straighter. I’m very aggressive out there and I just try and make the impossible possible. I’m very happy because I’ve been working and practising hard and I’ve played good golf,” Van Tonder said on Friday after winning another R95 100, which saw him top the Rise Up Series order of merit by more than R132 000 from second-placed Darren Fichardt, who missed the cut at Huddle Park.

While Van Tonder’s game-plan is to simply overpower golf courses, he also had the gall on Friday to not drop a single shot, in fact he made just one bogey the whole tournament, despite his aggressive approach. It was telling that Jaco Ahlers won the Betway Birdie Challenge for the Rise Up Series, with 79 across the five tournaments, but could only finish second on Friday despite shooting a superb 65. The difference is that while Van Tonder ‘only’ made 77 birdies, he is eliminating the mistakes that separate the winner from the also-rans.

“To have three wins, I have no words, and I knew I had to make birdies today because Jaco played very well. Fortunately I don’t hit the ball so skew, I hit it as hard as I can and straight, and I’ve always made lots of birdies. But I saw that my mistake was making bogeys as well, and so many of those are unnecessary bogeys.

“To shoot 21-under-par shows that I’m not making bogeys, there are always birdies out there. My chipping has also always been good, I have a 63⁰ lob-wedge and when I have that in my hand I feel like I have an 80% chance of chipping in,” Van Tonder said.

Brazilian veteran Adilson da Silva shared second place with Ahlers on 17-under after shooting a 66, while Jacques Blaauw finished in fourth on 16-under and rookie Malcolm Mitchell was one stroke further back after both of them closed with 68s.

Charl Schwartzel put two years of brutally hard work, frustration and demoralisation behind him as he won the Alfred Dunhill Championship at Leopard Creek on Sunday, cruising to victory by four strokes in the co-sanctioned European/Sunshine Tour event outside Malelane.

It is Schwartzel’s first win since he completed a hat-trick of titles at Leopard Creek in the last week of November 2013; since then his swing disintegrated and he even discovered that his putting had major flaws.

“It feels fantastic to win again because the last two years have been the biggest slump my golf has ever been in, sometimes I would think ‘am I ever going to win again?’ I’ve worked really hard in that time, your expectations get higher and then it’s frustrating when one or two bad rounds mean you just can’t get to the top,” Schwartzel said after his final-round 70 left him on 15-under-par for the tournament.

“There are 13 years of demons running around in my head and that’s a lot of demons to fight. It gets harder, but I feel that I’m a better player. I don’t think I can improve much on what happens on the range – where my game feels flawless – and I just need to bring that game to the golf course more often, I need to make that gap between the two smaller.”

What made the 31-year-old’s 10^th European Tour victory even more special was that he did not play anywhere near his best over the weekend but was still able to do what was necessary to win.

“It was a struggle over the weekend, I was way off my best game, but to get it done, to manage my way around, keep the ball in play and grind it out, means I’d give my effort an A+, that’s a big achievement. Jack Nicklaus said he won many tournaments with his B or C game, and that’s what makes this win even more satisfying,” Schwartzel said.

Frenchmen Sebastien Gros and Benjamin Hebert were Schwartzel‘s closest challengers at the start of the final round, but they both fell back, Hebert only managing a level-par 72 to finish third on 10-under and Gros being derailed by successive double-bogeys on the third and fourth holes on his way to a 73 and fourth place on nine-under.

Instead it was the old boy, Gregory Bourdy, who flew the Tricolour highest as he surged into second place on 11-under-par with a 68. Things could have been very different if the 33-year-old hadn’t found the dreaded bunker left of the seventh green, from where he chipped into the water and ended with a six on the par-three.

Another Frenchman, Thomas Linard (70), finished in a tie for fifth on eight-under-par alongside Englishman Matt Ford (70) and Joost Luiten (71) of the Netherlands.

Jaco van Zyl, who fired a 64 for the lowest round of the day, and defending champion Branden Grace (71) were the next best South Africans, in a tie for eighth place on seven-under with Englishman Eddie Pepperell (68).

Danny Willett called it a “ridiculous” amount of money as he cashed in to the tune of $1.25 million by winning the Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City on Sunday, but his sensational final round of 66 to head the elite 30-man field by four strokes deserved no less.

It is a triumph the 27-year-old will no doubt cherish, being just his second, but he also maintains that one of the most lucrative tournaments on the European Tour is extremely special in its own right.

“It’s a ridiculous amount of money to win, but a week like this won’t be matched anywhere, not even on the PGA Tour. It’s great to win against a very good field, because it says I’m improving and I can compete against the best,” Willett said.

The win takes the former amateur world number one into the top 60 on the world professional rankings and means a definite place in the Majors is beckoning, never mind the Ryder Cup points earned by one of Europe’s rising stars.

It was a win based on his aggression off the tee and his deft touch around and on the greens.

“We [he shared the credit with caddy John Smart] had a good game-plan, this course is visually intimidating off the tee, but we wanted to be aggressive and take it on, I trusted my driver. We would take on shots where others would lay back.

“I also felt comfortable on the greens, they remind me of home without much grain on them. The grass around the greens is also not as sticky as elsewhere, it feels similar to home,” Willett said.

With that positive attitude, he perhaps caught the other Englishmen in the final three-ball napping and Luke Donald and Ross Fisher were still trying to get into their rounds by the time Willett had roared to three birdies in the first five holes.

“I hit a lot of driver on the first few holes where a lot of other golfers would hit irons. It meant I had a five-iron into two, a nine-iron into three, where the others are hitting five or six-irons into narrow greens. There was no hanging back for me,” Willett said.

Donald endured a frustrating day on his 37^th birthday with a one-over-par 73, but the overnight leader had the good grace to rave about Willett’s performance.

“I could have played a bit better but I still would have had to shoot five‑under just to tie with Danny.  He played really focused golf today and hats off, he’s a deserved winner.

“He just had a red‑hot putter, didn’t seem to miss and did everything really well. He just drove it amazingly well around here, which is a very tough, tight golf course. There’s a lot of trouble, and every time when the pressure is on, he hit it down the middle,” Donald said.

Willett had reason to be smug as he was barely challenged in the final round, but he admitted that he still felt the pressure.

“It was always comfortable enough, but you still put pressure on yourself, you’re saying ‘well I can only throw this away from here’. Three-putting on nine after I hit two good shots in gave me a kick up the backside and it was a good one to win … “ he said.

He was worth it all the way, particularly on the weekend when he shot 65-66, and the richness of the event means he now has a sizeable head-start on the European Tour’s Race to Dubai.

“It’s obviously a real boost, I’ll be leading the Order of Merit and hopefully the other wins will come along the way,” Willett said.

The quality of his play suggests that win may even come next weekend at the Alfred Dunhill Championship at Leopard Creek.