Ken Borland

Pretoria Country Club will differ greatly from the Copperleaf course he won the title on last year, but Englishman Ross Fisher will be the favourite when the co-sanctioned Tshwane Open starts this morning at the parklands course in Waterkloof.

Fisher is the second highest-ranked golfer in the field at 66^th in the world rankings, behind compatriot Andy Sullivan (57^th), so he has the pedigree; and he certainly has the form judging by his lofty third position in the European Tour’s Race to Dubai.

The lanky 34-year-old comes to Pretoria fresh off a tie for 23^rd in the lucrative WGC Cadillac Championship at Doral, where he finished with three rounds of par or better, so Fisher is in a good frame of mind.

“It’s a very different course, a lot shorter and more fiddly, there’s a lot of positional play off the tees so you’re hitting a lot of irons and not many drivers. I prefer quite long and tight courses because driver is my strength, but it’s been a very good start to the season. Finishing second at Sun City was a great start, I had a decent three weeks in the desert and I’m really pleased I came back well at Doral.

“This course should be easier because the winds were pretty strong and there was a lot of water at Doral, but there’s still trouble out there. But I’ve come up with my own game plan, being strategic is going to play a critical role,” Fisher said yesterday.

The former Ryder Cup player’s namesake, Trevor Fisher Junior, is still recovering from his breakthrough win last weekend at the Africa Open in East London, but the South African is determined to not rest on that triumph.

“I’m still on a high, but it’s been tough with all the calls and messages and with all the excitement I’ve hardly slept. But last week is now in the past and I just want to get out on to the first tee and play. I don’t want to get comfortable, I want to try and win again as soon as possible,” Fisher Junior said.

“If it will take a week or 10 months, I don’t know. There are such small margins in golf,” he said before using his own poor form at the Dimension Data Pro-Am, where he shot 74-69-78-76, two weeks prior to East London, as an illustration.

That will give hope to George Coetzee, who is playing on his home course, but admits he doesn’t know whether he is going “to play well or badly until the first tee on Thursday”.

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Glendower Golf Club, the classic parklands layout in Edenvale, will host the South African Open for the second successive time, from January 8-11 next year, the Sunshine Tour announced yesterday.

It will be the fifth time overall that the 6899m course will host the world’s second oldest national open, following last year’s event won by Morten Orum Madsen, and the 1997 (Vijay Singh), 1993 (Clinton Whitelaw) and 1989 (Fred Wadsworth) tournaments.

The 104^th edition of the South African Open will be the first since 2010 for which the Sunshine Tour will hold the commercial rights, which is one of the reasons the tournament has moved from November to January, which will hopefully make it easier for the country’s top stars to participate.

The SA Open will now fill the spot in the calendar that had been taken by the winners-only Volvo Golf Champions, staged in Durban over the last two years.

“We are delighted that we can announce that the City of Ekurhuleni will remain on board as the host sponsor for the 104th SA Open and we thank the mayor, Cllr Mondli Gungubele, and his executive for their massive support of the SA Open and professional golf in South Africa. We are also very pleased to be able to return to the magnificent Glendower Golf Club for the second consecutive year,” Selwyn Nathan, the executive director of the Sunshine Tour, said yesterday.

“We are honoured to once again be the host city of the prestigious South African Open Championship and look forward to welcoming some of the very best golfers in the world to our aerotropolis. We are very proud to be involved with an event of this stature. For the past three years that we have been involved with the SA Open it has given our city such important exposure to so many decision-makers around the world – something that augurs well for our efforts to bring in investors from all over the world,” Gungubele said.

Marquee names for the tournament will be announced soon, according to the Sunshine Tour, and there are also plans afoot to ensure South Africa’s leading golfers play regularly in the South African Open.