Ken Borland

PORT EDWARD –  Jaco Ahlers showed the experience of a mature golfer and the determination that comes from plenty of hard work as he withstood the threat of the on-fire duo of Shaun Norris and Brandon Stone to claim a one-stroke victory in the SunBet Challenge hosted by Wild Coast Sun on Friday.

The 42-year-old held a four-stroke lead going into the final round, but with the weather having turned nice after two days of strong wind, Norris and Stone launched a ferocious charge for the top of the leaderboard.

Norris, who has won 13 times around the world, produced a tremendous round after an early bogey on the par-four second hole. Thereafter the 2021/22 Sunshine Tour Order of Merit winner reeled off three birdies and an eagle on the front nine, and collected another six birdies on the back nine. Norris played the stretch of holes from the seventh to the 12^th in six-under-par, and he needed a birdie at the last to become just the third golfer in the Sunshine Tour’s modern era to score 59, after Peter Karmis in 2009 and Casey Jarvis last year.

Norris could only make par on the par on the par-four last hole, leaving him with a 60 for 11-under-par overall.

Stone, meanwhile, produced a superb, bogey-free seven-under-par 63 to finish on 12-under for the tournament, just failing to add to his five professional titles.

When Ahlers double-bogeyed the par-four ninth and then dropped another shot on the par-three 13^th, he slipped to 11-under, tied with Norris and with Stone blossoming. But the 12-time winner overcame a tough day for him by knuckling down when it really mattered and birdied the par-four 15^th and then the par-five 16^th, before finishing with two pars.

“I made it tough for myself, conditions were good but it was a fighting day for me, full of poor ball-striking,” Ahlers said after his second professional win at the Wild Coast Sun Country Club. “But I just had to keep going. I felt it was my tournament the whole day, that kept me going and I didn’t think of losing.

“My experience definitely helped and counted for a lot in the end. It was a bad golfing day, but I always thought the tournament was mine to lose.”

Having seen what Norris had done when he teed off on the 10^th, Ahlers then saw Stone’s score on the 15^th. He responded with a drive that left him with an ideal number to hit a sand-wedge at the flag, hit it close and then boxed the putt.

On 16 he hit an even better tee-shot, describing it as the most crucial shot of his round, leaving him with an easy iron into the green and a birdie.

While Ahlers’ two-putt for par and victory on the 18th may have looked devoid of drama, he said he still felt like he had a mountain to climb on the last hole.

“There’s always drama on 18! But I hit a good shot and then hit a wedge away from the flag, for a reasonable two-putt for par. It may have looked drama-less, but there’s always those thoughts in your head,” Ahlers said.

But the Centurion resident silenced those negative thoughts in impressive fashion, signing for a final-round 69 for 13-under-par.

At just 26 years of age, Thriston Lawrence is not yet an expert at finishing off wins, but his temperament and skill were still enough to carry him to an exciting one-stroke victory in the South African Open at Blair Atholl Golf and Equestrian Estate on Sunday.

Lawrence was leading by five shots with seven holes to play, but he let Frenchman Clement Sordet back into the contest with a horror run that saw him drop five shots between the 12^th and 16^th holes, including a double-bogey on the par-four 15^th, when he hit his second into the river.

Sordet had now drawn level, having birdied the par-four 14^th after a great approach shot to 12 feet. But the Challenge Tour graduate then blinked as he missed a six-foot putt for par on the penultimate hole, and then his drive on the par-five 18^th went into the fairway bunker, meaning he had to lay up and couldn’t really put pressure on Lawrence.

The South African, who collected four birdies between the fourth and 10^th holes, could afford to miss a three-foot birdie putt and still win by one.

“In a one-on-one like that, you need to make pars and not make mistakes, even when I was five ahead,” Lawrence said after his third DP World Tour win, all of them coming this year.

“Inside I’m not always calm, but it comes with experience, having been in that situation, and once you have won, it all adds up in terms of experience. It’s a big mental thing and I try to think of the present.

“So it was nice to see I managed to stay in the moment, even though I was nervous. I had been five ahead and I didn’t want to disappoint friends, family and sponsors. There was quite a lot of emotion walking up 18, it was a weird but good feeling.

“It’s never easy to win, it’s the toughest thing, but you teach yourself with experience. It felt easy in the middle of the round, but then golf happened and it was not the prettiest finish. But I just tried to stick to my game,” Lawrence said.

Starting the final round two strokes ahead of Sordet, Lawrence did not have the start he would have wanted as he bogeyed the first hole and Sordet pulled level with a birdie.

But an even bigger swing happened on the par-four fourth as Lawrence curled a superb approach shot to eight feet from the pin and made the birdie, while the 30-year-old Sordet found the fairway bunker and then hit his second out of bounds, leading to a double-bogey.

Suddenly Lawrence was three ahead and he extended that lead to five with another birdie on the fifth and back-to-back gains on nine and 10.

Pretoria Country Club’s Christian Maas claimed the Freddie Tait Cup for leading amateur as he finished on five-under-par. All five members of the GolfRSA squad who received invitations to the tournament made the cut, the first time this has happened in at least 30 years and exactly what the backers of the amateur programme would have wanted.

Darren Fichardt birdied the last hole for a six-under-par 64 and a one-stroke victory in the Betway Championship at Killarney Country Club on Friday and said he was grateful for the return of butterflies in the stomach after five months without any competitive golf.

Fichardt’s 64 was the lowest round of the tournament and saw him sign for a three-under-par total of 207, one ahead of fellow veteran Ulrich van den Berg, who himself had a birdie putt on 18 for the tie and a playoff, but it shaved the hole from 12 feet out.

The 45-year-old Fichardt holed out from eight feet on the last for his sixth birdie of the day and his 18^th Sunshine Tour title as the Betway Championship launched the new Rise Up Series that marks a return for professional golf.

“I’m very happy to win and it’s just awesome to have those competitive golf butterflies in the stomach again after five months on the couch. Going into the final round six shots behind it’s just a case of whatever happens, happens. It’s a case of all or nothing. My tee-shot on 18 was a bit short, so I had to keep my approach under the trees, it was a bit low, but it helped because with a high floater you never know how it’s going to bounce.

“At the start of the day I was missing short putts for birdie and getting frustrated. With the scoring system now after Lockdown you can see all the scores all the time and I saw how my good friend Jaco van Zyl was burning up the course with a 65. So I thought I better start getting some birdies and to get three straight around the turn was good because this is a tough course,” Fichardt said after claiming R95 100 for the win.

Overnight leader Alex Haindl fell down the final classification with a two-over-par 72, finishing in a tie for third. Two birdies on the front nine kept him neck-and-neck with Anton Haig, who eagled the fifth, but successive bogeys at the seventh and eighth saw Haindl slip and he came home in 37.

Haig collapsed on the back nine with five bogeys and a double-bogey on the par-three 17^th when he was short of the green, but struggled to get out of a grass bunker.

Jaco Prinsloo and Ruan Korb shared third place with Haindl on one-under-par. Prinsloo was in a share of the lead but bogeyed the last two holes.

Fichardt said it was a brutally tough return to action for the Sunshine Tour golfers, likening the course, which was dry with greens like ice-rinks, to a U.S. Open layout.

“It was frustrating because it’s a short track but the greens were tricky with the lines difficult to read and a lot of short putts missed. It was like playing in the U.S. Open. The first day was really cold and windy and I would have been happy with eight-over never mind three-over-par. The second round [70] was a bit better and then today was much better. “I realised today that you just have to get the ball into play here, you have to position yourself. It was definitely experience that carried me through today, after I was a bit more aggressive in the first two rounds,” Fichardt said.