Ken Borland

EDENVALE, Gauteng – Norway’s Maiken Bing Paulsen produced a second consecutive top-class round of golf, including a pair of chip-ins for eagle, on Thursday as she gave herself a handy two-shot lead going into the final round of the Jabra Ladies Classic at Glendower Golf Club.

Paulsen shot a four-under-par 68 in the second round on Thursday to climb to 10-under-par for the tournament, doing extremely well to back up her 66 on the first day on a day when the scoring was higher and no-one managed to shoot lower than her.

South Africa’s Cara Gorlei also fired a 68 on Thursday and lies second on eight-under-par, while Elena Hualde (Spain) and the Swedish duo of Lisa Pettersson and Moa Folke were also four-under for the second round and shared third place with England’s Gabriella Cowley (71) on six-under-par.

The 27-year-old Paulsen was level-par through the first seven holes, but then chipped in for eagle on the par-five eighth. She dropped her second shot on the par-four 11^th, but Paulsen caught fire in the middle of the back nine as she birdied the 13^th, chipped in again for eagle on the 15^th and birdied the 16^th.

Unfortunately she bogeyed the par-three 17^th, but Paulsen was still understandably delighted with her round.

“It was a good day even though my putting didn’t get the ball in the hole as much as the first day. But I had three chip-ins, for both of my eagles and to birdie the fourth, and I was really steady off the tee,” she said.

A small struggle with her iron play was the only worry for Paulsen, but she handled it with aplomb thanks to her excellent short game.

“My irons were a bit of a struggle, so hopefully I figure that out for the final round. I only gave myself a few good opportunities on the front nine and I almost lost my ball when I bogeyed the seventh. So it was an interesting front nine, but I just tried to keep going and stay positive.

“There were some interesting pins and because the course is still wet it was playing quite long. But there was a little less wind today, which was nice. I didn’t find a big difference in difficulty today, but then I was hitting the ball so well on to the fairways, I am quite long off the tee, so that advantage meant maybe I didn’t notice.

“I’ve been trying to work on my swing and I’ve changed a lot, so that’s why my irons are still a bit flaky. Mistakes will happen in this transition period, but in the final round I’m just going to keep doing what I do. It’s the boring answer, but I just want to give myself chances, be in the fairways, try and make sure my irons are decent and hopefully the putts go in and it’s a happy day,” Paulsen said.

It was also a happy day for Gorlei, who scorched through the back nine in four-under 32.

Russia’s Nina Pegova, who shared the first-round lead with Paulsen, started her second round on the back nine and reached the turn in one-under, but then had a nightmare start to the front nine as she bogeyed the second and double-bogeyed the fourth hole. She finished with a 73 to drop back to five-under-par, sharing seventh place with South Africa’s Stacy Bregman, who was also part of the impressive 68-Club.

KEMPTON PARK, Ekurhuleni – Buying confidence is a bit like trying to find a shortcut to experience, but the brilliant golf Casandra Alexander produced on Saturday to win the Absa Ladies Invitational at Serengeti Estates has ensured she will approach the next two months cock-a-hoop.

Playing what she described as “flawless golf”, Alexander fired a superb six-under-par 66 on Saturday to finish on 12-under-par overall and win the R1.2 million Absa Ladies Invitational by four strokes.

The 24-year-old had begun the final day tied for the lead with fellow South African Kiera Floyd, but Alexander went out in 34 before a brilliant back nine saw her collect an eagle and two birdies to romp to victory.

While Floyd struggled to a 77 on Saturday and finished 11 strokes behind, Alexander’s closest challenger was Spaniard Harang Lee, who also shot a 66 to finish on eight-under-par.

“It was definitely very close to flawless golf, I played unbelievably well and I am really happy,” Alexander said after her fifth Sunshine Ladies Tour title. “I had one or two drops early on which was maybe a bit of nerves, but I must have had 10 15-foot putts and I just couldn’t miss the first few.

“So I just tried to give myself birdie opportunities and I did manage to sink a few more. I played smart, but still aggressively and had a hot putter. Everything was solid, I hot my irons really well.”

Next week Alexander will defend her Jabra Ladies Classic title at Glendower, and then follows six consecutive weeks of European Tour action, including two co-sanctioned events in South Africa.

“I’m going to take a lot of confidence into Glendower, I’m hitting the ball well and that is a ball-striker’s course. And then it’s the two co-sanctioned events. I have a lot of events coming up, eight weeks in a row, and hopefully I can hit the ball even better and make more putts. I will carry this win with me,” Alexander said.

Her eagle on the 483m par-five 11^th came after a superb four-iron over the flag.

“I kept missing my drives slightly left, so I decided to hit a little cut off the tee and hit an unbelievable drive. I then hit a grip-down four-iron 185 metres into the wind, another little cut, and I hit it flush straight at the pin. I told it to sit down and it pitched five metres behind, leaving me with a 15-foot putt for eagle.

“That kind of separated myself, allowed the nerves to settle. I just played smart from there, I didn’t need to do anything crazy. I held things together well, it was all really tidy and I had two lip-outs in the last three holes,” Alexander said.

The Johannesburger backed up her eagle with birdies at the 12^th and 15tgh holes, and then her challengers were spent.

South Africa’s Cara Gorlei also shot a 66 to finish third on five-under-par, with compatriot Stacy Bregman fourth on four-under after a 69.

The third round of a golf tournament – colloquially known as ‘Moving Day’ – is often about building a healthy lead heading into the final round, but for Max Homa, Saturday at the Gary Player Country Club was all about consolidation and the world number eight has fought off numerous challengers to end the penultimate day of the Nedbank Golf Challenge with a one-stroke lead.

Beginning the third round tied for the lead with Matthieu Pavon, Homa dropped just one stroke on Saturday and that was the key to his pre-eminent position heading into the final round. What he described as a “squirrelly” start saw the American bogey the par-three fourth hole, but he immediately birdied the fifth to cut Pavon’s lead back to one shot.

The key moment of the day came on the par-five 10^th as Homa holed his bunker shot for eagle. Another birdie for the 32-year-old on the next par-five, the 14^th, ensured he would lead alone after Pavon dropped shots on 15 and 16.

Homa posted a three-under-par 69 on Saturday to finish on 13-under overall, with Pavon’s 70 leaving him on 12-under. Nicolai Hojgaard’s 69, containing three bogeys as well as six birdies, lifted him to 11-under-par with Thorbjorn Olesen, whose only bogey came on the 16^th, as he also shot 69.

“I didn’t swing so well to start, it was all a bit scrappy, but I hit the ball really well for the last 10 holes, I just didn’t sink anything,” Homa said after his round. “It felt like I was hitting good shots but not capitalising, things weren’t going my way before that nice bunker shot on 10, that was a lovely boost.

“I gave myself a lot of looks today and the plan tomorrow is to make a few more putts. It’s a dream and an honour just to have the opportunity to win this tournament, which has a tremendous history. Every day we walk past the winners’ plaques at the ninth green, it’s an impressive list and I would love to add my name to that legacy. All I can do is put myself in the best position to do that,” Homa said.

Pavon was okay with his position after a boiling hot, gruelling day at Sun City, nestled like a kiln between the Pilanesberg mountains. Before his late bogeys on the 15^th and 16^th holes, the Frenchman had been four-under for his round, not bad going in the testing conditions with the wind also having picked up.

“It was nice to start well with three birdies in the first seven holes, but overall it was a real grind today. It was hard, the pins are in tricky places and it was all about managing your game. It was also a very long day – five-and-a-half hours, which is too long in that heat and intensity, you drain a lot of energy.

“It was good to walk away with two pars, that was a very solid finish. It’s always nice having won a few weeks ago [the Spanish Open on October 15], so my confidence is pretty high and my game feels good,” Pavon said.

The chances of a South African winner, for the first time since Branden Grace in 2017, seem to be drying up with Hennie du Plessis still the leading local, but on five-under, eight shots off the lead. Three birdies in the first five holes on Saturday were considerable hops up the leaderboard, but he then slumped back with five bogeys leaving him with a 74.

Dan Bradbury, whose rapid rise from nowhere to prominence is one of the stories of the season, had a day of astronomical ups and downs, a bogey at the last leaving him on 10-under-par in fifth place.

On the 195m, par-three foirth, he was inches away from claiming a hole-in-one, but he followed up that birdie with another one on the fifth. The Joburg Open winner went out in two-under 34 after a bogey on the par-four eighth and a birdie on the par-five ninth.

The back nine was an epic rollercoaster for the Englishman. He left his birdie putt on the par-five 11^th just short and then bogeyed the par-three 12^th. He missed another birdie opportunity on the par-fibe 14^th with a terrible close-range miss, but them made a marvellous 25ft putt for par on 15, followed by a massive 34-footer for birdie on the 16^th.

Like many others, he then found himself in trouble on the 18^th, the toughest hole in the third round, when he missed the green right and chipped out of the rough, 17 feet past the flag, failing to make the par-putt.

by Mike Green

There will be more rubbish spoken about this than there will be at a conspiracy theorists’ convention. But in the end, neither of the protagonists in the great golf culture war can with any certainty at all claim to be the winners with this great ‘merger’.

The PGA Tour and their ‘strategic partners’, the DP World Tour, have climbed into bed with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund. The PIF was the monetary force behind LIV Golf, so, naturally, all the headlines are that the PGA Tour and LIV Golf are ‘merging’. In truth, there appears to be much still to be worked out. So it’s not entirely clear what the merger entails.

Reading and re-reading the press releases, and watching the ‘interview’ video of Keith Pelley of the DP World Tour (it was patently and painfully staged), and the MSNBC interview of the PGA Tour’s Jay Monahan and PIF’s Yasir Al-Rumayyan, there is not a single word about the continued existence of LIV in any shape at all after its 2023 season.

To quote Eamon Lynch (I realise that doing so might not sit well with some people, but so be it): “If this were a genuine victory for LIV’s concept, the announcement would have featured Greg Norman, the league’s chief executive and propagandist. Instead, he was not mentioned. Still, not the first man disappeared after his utility for the Saudis concluded.”

Of course, Norman’s is not the only ‘big’ name conspicuous by its absence from the announcement. If ever anyone went out on a limb (forgive the expression in this Saudi-soaked context) for his cause, it was Rory McIlroy. Quite what this sudden rapprochement has done to him can only be imagined. And as the cosying up between Monahan and Al-Rumayyan appears to have been about seven weeks in the making, perhaps it is no surprise that McIlroy slow-marched his way through two turgid performances in the Masters and the PGA Championship. And withdrew from an ‘elevated’ PGA Tour event, the virtues of which he himself had so evangelically extolled. His career might have looked very different had he not taken on himself the leadership role – or was it forced on him? – in the battle against the godless LIV. Someone owes him something that will be, at very least, an apology.

How will all of this kissing and making up change the face of golf? It would appear that the long-ballyhooed ‘global schedule’ might, at last, make an appearance, at least in rudimentary form, from 2024.

In that global schedule, it seems probable that there will be a nod to LIV’s alleged ‘selling point’, the team concept. If it takes place in a small window – say from September to December – Ernie Els will feel vindicated for his suggestion for accommodating Norman’s fantasies (I believe he might have used the term ‘hit and giggle’) in the ‘silly season’ before the end of the year.

It also seems probable that several of the DP World Tour’s events will enjoy some sort of elevated status, both in terms of prize-money and in having the week to themselves, or at least unchallenged by a PGA Tour event of remotely similar status.

Lost between those broad brushstrokes is the position of a circuit like the Sunshine Tour. There is hard work to be done to make the co-sanctioned tournaments it has with the DP World Tour retain a status that justifies the interests of the newly-born behemoth. Perhaps the PIF people will pour some of their money into a tournament like the South African Open to help it retain its status as one of the prestigious titles around the world. Perhaps the lure of increased visibility on a global stage will entice local commercial support too – and not just for the flagship of the local schedule.

As for the players that have been caught in the crossfire, the only winners seem to be those who kept their powder relatively dry. Brooks Koepka, for example, will emerge from this with his reputation and ability to compete at the highest level (that’s neither LIV nor the PGA Tour, if you were wondering) intact. Koepka has never been much of a stoker of animosities – other than with Bryson DeChambeau, and wasn’t that fun? He stayed true to himself and his belief that the LIV jump was of personal benefit to him on a number of levels, and he didn’t waste his energy on the pettiness that characterised much of the conversation about the great divide. There are one or two others like him, but they haven’t shown much yet. Much golf, that is.

The most vocal of the anti-establishment critics have been players who were already in the process of riding off into the sunset. Many of them will stay on the edges in the new dispensation, and probably remain outside consideration for Ryder Cup captaincies, for instance. Their golfing relevance is in any case tending towards the PGA Tour Champions, or the Legends Tour, now.

To their credit, the South Africans playing in LIV this season have remained admirably uncommunicative about their situations. But it will be good to see them able to participate in the mainstream again. All of them have international success in their futures, and now, perhaps, that can be achieved without the wretched dogfight that was the golf landscape over the last two years.

With details conspicuously absent from what we know so far, it’s premature to celebrate anything just yet. But it does seem sure that LIV Golf as we have come to know it is winding down.

First published on the SA Tour Golf website – https://satourgolf.co.za/2023/06/06/comment-who-wins-and-who-loses-in-great-merger/