Ken Borland

George Coetzee and Jaco van Zyl are at the top of the leaderboard after the second round of the Chase to the Investec Cup final, but both are relieved that their torment on the beautiful but treacherous Millvale course is now over as the elite 30-man field relocates to Sun City for the last two rounds on the Lost City course.

Coetzee, who shared the overnight lead with Charl Schwartzel, shot a two-under-par 70 on Friday to go to six-under for the tournament, alone in front and projected to finish first in the Chase to the Investec Cup final standings, which would win him the bonus pool prize of a cool R3.5 million.

Van Zyl, after shooting 73 on the first day, produced Friday’s best round, a five-under-par 67 that lifted him to four-under overall, two shots behind Coetzee.

Both their rounds featured just one bogey, a six on the par-five sixth for Van Zyl and for Coetzee on the seventh, a remarkable effort on a course as tough as Millvale with its slick greens, plenty of water and a tricky wind.

“You’ve just got to try and stick around here, it’s a great test of golf with firm greens, the flags tucked away and a lot of water. If you start on the 10^th then you have seven really tough holes on the trot from the 15^th to the third and you just try for level-par.

“It should be a bit easier at Lost City on Saturday and Sunday, there’s a bit more scoring opportunities. I’m hitting the ball well, so I look forward to that,” Van Zyl, who was the inaugural Chase to the Investec Cup champion in 2013, said.

“I survived – it was another tough day,” Coetzee said. “I didn’t play as well today, but I scrambled and made pars. I drove the ball better yesterday, but I putted better today. I’m where I want to be, but there’s still a lot of golf to play.”

The Millvale course is hard enough without bad luck playing a part, but Van Zyl’s bogey on six came when a bee landed on his ball on his downswing and he put his second into the water, while Schwartzel, the co-leader after the first round, woke up with a painful shoulder and slipped down the leaderboard after shooting a 74.

It was a good effort by Schwartzel considering every shot had him in pain, but the 2011 Masters champion said he will be forced to withdraw on Saturday if anti-inflammatories can’t get the swelling down.

Schwartzel is four behind Coetzee, alongside Justin Harding, who has produced two sub-par rounds of 71 practically out of nowhere given his recent form.

Darren Fichardt, Dean Burmester and Jean Hugo, all long-time Sunshine Tour pros, are all on one-under-par and in a position to shake up the leaderboard over the weekend.

*Defending champion Lee-Anne Pace, South Africa’s highest-ranked women’s golfer, fired a three-under-par 68 to lead the Investec Cup for Ladies by three strokes over Monique Smit after the first round.

Jaco van Zyl made sure that neither the heat nor the hidden dangers of Glendower Golf Club killed his momentum as he soared into the first-round lead of the South African Open with a great round of seven-under-par 65 on Thursday.

The 36-year-old South African teed off from the 10^th at 7am and started well with a birdie on the beautiful 436-metre par-four, and Van Zyl picked up further shots on the 13^th, 15^th and 16^th holes to reach the turn on four-under. That quickly became seven-under as he birdied the par-four first hole and eagled the second, but then the heat and a blustery wind began to take their toll and Van Zyl dropped a shot on the seventh before regaining it with a birdie on the eighth.

“It was absolutely gorgeous for the first few holes today, there was not a breath of wind, it was nice and cool, so you really needed to capitalise early on. By the time we got to our eighth hole [the 17^th], the wind really started picking up and it was warming up, so it just got so much tougher out there.

“It’s one of those golf courses that you go round and you think that it’s there for the taking, but as soon as you let your guard down a little, it bites. So you’ve always got to pick your safe targets off the tees and into greens,” Van Zyl said.

Another Gauteng golfer, Shaun Norris, also teed off from the 10^th but 20 minutes earlier than Van Zyl, and he claimed second place with a six-under-par 66 that included an eagle on the 500-metre, par-five 15^th.

South Africans Keith Horne and Jbe’ Kruger were the best of the afternoon golfers as they shot five-under-par 67s to share third place. Branden Grace fired a solid 69, while Retief Goosen was the best of the former champions with a 68 that included two double-bogeys.

But Glendower certainly showed her teeth for some of the other big names in the field, with defending champion Andy Sullivan slumping to a 75 after double-bogeys on the par-five second and par-three 17^th holes.

Two-time champion Trevor Immelman and George Coetzee were also three-over-par, while Hennie Otto, the last South African to win the national open, in 2011, shot a birdie-less 76.

Five-time champion Ernie Els, who also started off the 10^th, eagled the eighth but then three-putted for bogey on the ninth to finish with a 73.

A shaky back nine in the wind cost Jaco van Zyl victory in the Africa Open two weeks ago, but the in-form South African will be one of the favourites at the European Tour co-sanctioned Tshwane Open which starts at Copperleaf Golf Estate on Thursday.

Van Zyl is chasing his first European Tour victory, which is a long-awaited event seeing as though he has had five top-three finishes in the last three years, as well as seven other top-10s and 11 Sunshine Tour victories.

The 34-year-old will need to improve his form off the tee, however, with Copperleaf being a lengthy 7,123m monster, but he does have the confidence of coming off a win in last weekend’s Sunshine Tour event, the Dimension Data Pro-Am in George.

“The course is really long but the greens are receptive, so I’m sure the scoring will be low,” Van Zyl said of the Copperleaf course formerly known as Gardener Ross.

“My short game is still sharp and my ball-striking was really good last week, I hit the ball nicely and it’s a bit better every week. You have to know what to hit off the tee here and what sort of lie you want to hit your second from,” Van Zyl, who is 82^nd in driving distance on the European Tour this year and 37^th in accuracy, said.

There is no doubt Van Zyl is a major threat in the final co-sanctioned event of the 2012/13 summer, sitting in first place in the Investec Cup standings, third on the Sunshine Tour order of merit, 33^rd on the Race to Dubai and up to 104^th on the world rankings after starting the year in 146^th. His last three finishes have been tied 11^th, tied second and last week’s victory in George.

But the field is a useful one and there are many dangers lurking, much like the numerous large bunkers that are a feature of the Ernie Els-designed course at Copperleaf.

Steve Webster of England is perhaps the most consistent performer on the European Tour thus far this season with four top-10 finishes in six starts, while South Africans Garth Mulroy and Thomas Aiken are also in fine form.

Africa Open winner Darren Fichardt is in the field and there is no lack of experienced worldwide winners either, with Michael Campbell, Jeev Milkha Singh, Jose-Maria Olazabal, Simon Dyson and Darren Clarke all teeing it up on Thursday.

Other participants who have shown top-class form lately include James Kingston, Adilson da Silva, Trevor Fisher Jnr and Danie van Tonder.

Olazabal is a golfing legend, a 31-time winner worldwide, including two Masters crowns, and a triumphant Ryder Cup as captain last year.

But the Spaniard admitted that he is going through a tough time with the driver, which is a major drawback on this particular course.

“Last weekend when I left home we had snow, so I didn’t have much practice over the last week because of the weather. But my last tournament was good [tied 17^th at the Dubai Desert Classic four weeks ago], although I’m having a tough time with my driver. It’s still my Achilles heel and with the course as long as it is, you need to hit it solid off the tee,” Olazabal said.

Campbell, a New Zealander, is also a major champion having won the 2005 US Open as a qualifier. He suffered a missed cut in his last tournament – the Dubai Desert Classic – but was in good form in the Middle East before that with top-20 finishes in both Abu Dhabi and Qatar.

A Maori, Campbell seems to have a healthy outlook on a game that catapulted him to stardom in 2005 before sending him back into anonymity.

“It’s only a game. My results reflect that I’ve turned around again, but I’ve always been up and down like a yo-yo, some very big highs and very big lows. I accept that and I’ve always had them. That’s golf,” Campbell said.

Dyson is a regular visitor to South Africa, having played in 13 co-sanctioned events and finished in the top-20 four times.

And he is a wary admirer of the talent in this country.

“Without a doubt I’ll be watching a few South Africans. They seem to come off the conveyor belt every year and you’ve got some really, really good talent. They all hit it a mile, which sickens me. Every single one of them seems to bomb it, even Sterne who must be 5-foot-one and Schwartzel who could hide behind the pin! It’s just ridiculous, it must be something in the water… or the biltong!” the Englishman joked.

Though the fairways are generally wide, there is a host of bunkers, and golfers who are not accurate run the risk of becoming mired in these sandy expanses.

“It’s brutally long in places, but some of the short holes are typical Ernie – lots of run-offs. A good short game is going to come to the fore if you do miss the short holes. It’s going to be a tough test, because every par-five feels like 650 yards, so it’s not the usual where everyone is going to be hammering it in two. The course is good and it’s in great condition,” the veteran Clarke said.

Milkha Singh is another who has been coming to South Africa for a long time, since 1998, and he is looking forward to a bit of wind blowing around the Highveld grassland course outside Centurion, the Indian having won the Scottish Open last year at the blustery links of Castle Stuart.

“It’s long but bearable. But I hope the wind picks up, that would make it interesting and I’m really happy in the wind,” he said.

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Jaco van Zyl has been playing his golf largely out of the limelight despite finishing in the top 10 of the Sunshine Tour Order of Merit for the last four years. But that could change if he wins the Joburg Open at Royal Johannesburg and Kensington on Sunday.

Van Zyl shot an outstanding five-under-par 67 on Saturday to move to 14-under-par and a tie for third place, just five out from the leading mark set by Richard Sterne and Trevor Fisher Jnr.

The 33-year-old member of Dainfern Golf Club almost had the distinction of starting and ending his round with an eagle. Van Zyl began the day with a three on the par-five first hole and then watched in disbelief as his 18-foot eagle putt on the last just lipped out.

“A foot from the hole, the ball just started to go right, but I thought enough of it would still be over the hole to go in,” Van Zyl mused after his round.

But by then he had become used to the ebbs and flows of his round on the East Course, considered to be the tougher of the two at Royal Joburg and solely used for the weekend.

“The first hole is obviously one you want to capitalise on being a par-five, but then on two, three and four you’re just hanging on. Six you can capitalise again on and although things went slow between nine and 15, I had a nice finish,” Van Zyl said.

The 2000 SA Amateur champion felt he had “kind of a chance” of winning on Sunday but conceded that Sterne and Fisher had the tournament under their control.

“I’ll really need a good one tomorrow and I must get a quick start,” Van Zyl said.

While the Lonehill resident says he feels most comfortable at home -“travelling really gets to you” – he will be heading over to Europe once again in April.

Van Zyl, despite seldom being mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Charl Schwartzel, George Coetzee, Richard Sterne and Thomas Aiken, has been able to shine over the last two years on the European Tour, comfortably retaining his card with 50th and 64th place finishes on the order of merit.

But he would dearly love to add a European Tour title to his collection of 10 Sunshine Tour wins.

“My first goal is to retain my card because I try not to lose perspective of how quickly things can go sour in this game. I want to stay modest, learn how to crawl before I try to walk and then run.

“My second goal is to make the Race to Dubai final, but winning a European Tour event has been on my mind for a while, I’ve had a couple of chances and I’d obviously really like to finish one off,” Van Zyl said.

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