Ken Borland

SUN CITY, North-West – Callum Mowat began with two birdies and just continued on that high as he shot a 67 to lead the SunBet Challenge hosted by Sun City after the first round on Wednesday, saying afterwards it was a round that “made me feel good about me”.

Mowat’s five-under-par score included just one bogey on the testing Gary Player Country Club layout and he came home in three-under 33. That gave him a one-stroke lead over Rourke van der Spuy on four-under, while MJ Viljoen and Harry Konig were tied for third after shooting 69s.

“I’ve been inside a deep hole and I needed to figure out how I felt about myself,” Mowat said. “It was nice to feel I belong out here and I am competitive, it was good to feel good about myself and where my game is trending. It made me feel good about me.

“I just tried to be aggressive, just let fly and stop trying to steer the ball around, let it run! The demanding thing about Gary Player Country Club is off the tee, but I was more aggressive than usual.

“That meant I could hit a lot more greens with shorter irons. My game-plan was to just get as far as possible off the tee, it worked well and then I just stuck to the plan,” the 30-year-old Mowat said. The Glendower golfer had not broken 70 yet in four rounds this season at the FBC Zimbabwe Open and the Sishen Classic.

The 27-year-old Viljoen looked like catching Mowat as he raced to four-under through 14 holes, but a weak finish saw him drop a shot at the par-four 18^th to finish two back on three-under.

Van der Spuy started his round with eight pars, but he caught fire around the turn with birdies on the ninth and 10^th holes, and he picked up further shots on the 13^th and 17^th holes in a bogey-free round.

Konig, hailing from Devon in England, is in his first season on the Sunshine Tour and he also dropped just one shot, making a four on the par-three 16^th, in his 69.

As three South African sides chase playoff spots in the last three rounds of United Rugby Championship round-robin action, one of the northern hemisphere’s star enforcers of the previous decade has said the high intensity of their play rather than a push to play expansive rugby is what will bring success for the Stormers, Sharks and Bulls.

Jim Hamilton is currently a pundit for Premier Sports but he played 63 Tests for Scotland and was a second-row star for teams like Leicester, Gloucester and Saracens. And he is a big fan of South African rugby.

“I always say for any team, if you’re struggling to get go-forward, go and get some South Africans,” Hamilton said in a URC media briefing on Monday. “South Africans are taking over as the best players in the world.

“I’ve been surprised by how much rugby the South African teams have played: they go wide from their own half, or straight from a scrum. But the European teams are still leading the charge in terms of the stats for tries scored, carries and defenders beaten. So why don’t they just play ball-in-hand against the South Africans?

“Well it’s hard to play in those conditions, they definitely have an effect, altitude hits you like a brick wall. I saw guys who were absolutely bollocked with the hands on their knees.

“But the game now is so driven by percentages and when the South African teams come over to Europe and decide not to play how they do in the Currie Cup but more like their national team, focusing more on territory and playing in the right areas, then they will become incredibly dangerous,” Hamilton said.

The former Scotland stalwart admitted to being frustrated by the poor start the South African teams made to the URC, but now that they have been back on home turf, they have been rampant

“South African players are the whole package – robust, the humility they bring, and they are hard; everything around them is just rugby. If I was a coach, I would go look there for players. It’s unquestionable that every single one of them in Europe has been a roaring success.

“But the South African teams were a bit of a disappointment at the start. We all said how positive their inclusion was, but then it was not how we thought it would be. But a lot of it had to do with the changes brought by Covid.

“They definitely struggled around the referees over here and their interpretations, it felt like they were playing for the sake of playing. I don’t think they got a fair shot then and it was always going to take a while for them to bed in to the competition.

“But now their results are speaking for themselves, now that they are fully loaded and taking the tournament seriously. Don’t just judge them on this year, but now we’ve seen the URC works,” Hamilton said.

Coach Jake White says the Bulls want to play at a tempo that is so high that the Sharks will battle to match it at altitude in their United Rugby Championship derby at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday.

White went on to accuse the Sharks of wanting to slow the game down so much that they have the lowest ball-in-play time of all their South African opposition. Sharks coach Sean Everitt certainly begs to differ and said altitude and conditioning were not going to trouble his team.

With the coaches crossing swords before the game, the Sharks desperate to bounce back from a draw and a loss, and the Bulls eager to not lose another home game, Saturday’s clash is bound to be a feisty affair.

“I hope the referee [AJ Jacobs] allows us to play a bit quicker,” White said on Friday. “In the last couple of weeks the games have been a bit slow. We want to play quick rugby at altitude.

“It will be very difficult for the Sharks to play at a high tempo at altitude and we want to fatigue them. If altitude was not so important, then most Olympic athletes would go train at sea-level and not at altitude.

“Science has proven the effects of altitude and the Sharks kick a lot, they play very slowly and they have the longest breaks between plays of all our opposition. We would be very happy if it was a quick game.

“We’re striving for 36 minutes ball-in-play and we want to get the tempo going. Hopefully this is the game where everything clicks for us,” White said.

Everitt pointed to the Currie Cup final in January 2021, when they went toe-to-toe with the Bulls before finally succumbing to an extra-time try, as proof of their ability to handle the altitude and tempo.

“Altitude is a mental thing. Twelve months ago we played for 100 minutes up there and it was just one set-piece at the death and our goalkicking that cost us. We should have won in 80 minutes. We don’t talk about altitude anymore,” Everitt said.

But White certainly does not view the Sharks as being easy to beat.

“The Sharks have pushed us the hardest of all the South African teams and they beat us in our last meeting in Durban. So I expect the same, fired-up performance from them.

“They have lots of Springboks, the list goes on and on of their incumbent Springboks. They are still the form team and the strongest on paper. I expect a great challenge.

“They will be playing for all they are worth. It’s going to be like a final because we can’t afford to lose again at home and they also lost last weekend. So I expect the two teams to have a really full go at each other,” White said.

South Africa are hosting the FIH Hockey Pro League in Potchefstroom over the next fortnight with high hopes of being competitive, but the multitude of unforced errors they made caused a most adverse outcome in their opening match against the Netherlands on Tuesday night as they were hammered 11-1.

The Netherlands scored first, in the seventh minute, through a penalty stroke by Tim Swaen after an early defensive mistake by the hosts.

And the third-ranked Dutch side stamped their dominance on the game from the second quarter as they went into halftime 4-1 up.

The floodgates really opened in the final quarter as the Netherlands more than doubled a 5-1 lead, scoring four goals in the first six minutes.

South Africa, ranked 14^th in the world, equalised at 1-1 in the 20^th minute through Bili Ntuli’s excellent deflection of a reverse-sticks cross from Mustapha Cassiem, but they didn’t have a prayer thereafter.

Their main failing was their inability to hold on to the ball, basic mistakes gifting possession to the Dutch, and there was also some naïve defending.

Jip Janssen, with two set-piece goals, Swaen, Thierry Brinkman and Thijs van Dam, with two goals apiece, were South Africa’s chief tormentors.

“We played badly against a good team,” South Africa coach Garreth Ewing summed up succinctly. “We lost our shape completely in the last 30 minutes. But hopefully we have all learnt a lot.

“There’s a lot to take on board. This was a reminder of where we are in world hockey. We will have to come out with the right attitude tomorrow night against India.”

India beat France 5-0 in Tuesday’s other game.