Ken Borland

BENONI, Gauteng – We will have to wait a little longer for Jayden Schaper’s maiden professional win, but Pieter Moolman was a worthy winner of the Fortress Invitational at Ebotse Links on Sunday as he pipped the highly-rated former junior star in a playoff.

Moolman certainly did the hard yards for his maiden Sunshine Tour title, starting the final round three shots behind Schaper. And as he reached the final hole in regulation play, he was three-under for his round, having mixed five birdies with two bogeys, and looked like falling just short on 12-under-par as Schaper was already on 14-under-par.

But the 31-year-old Moolman hit an excellent drive and a superb approach shot on the par-five 18^th to 10 feet from the hole, and nailed the eagle putt to vault to 14-under.

Schaper then bogeyed the par-four 17^th but made birdie at the last to force a playoff with an excellent up-and-down after short-siding himself.

Moolman again hit a brilliant second in the playoff, finishing just off the green after being in the semi-rough on a mound. He would chip and sink a four-foot putt for birdie, while Schaper was unfortunate that his approach shot, which looked really good in the air, took a hard first bounce and ran through the green. The 21-year-old then could not quite sink a 10-footer for birdie, handing Moolman the win.

“I’ve lost a few times in these situations, but I’ve played better golf a few times than I did today,” Moolman said. “So to get over the line is really special and it shows that it does not take a perfect performance to win.

“It’s more mental, about believing you can still put a score on the board if you’re playing average golf, when your swing is not really there. I just had to stay in the moment and commit to what I was doing, take it shot-for-shot.”

Schaper will look back on a level-par back nine, which featured bogeys at the par-three 11^th and the penultimate hole, as having cost him, but he showed tremendous determination and character in birdieing the last hole to get into the playoff, from which point it all becomes a bit of a lottery.

For Moolman, who like Schaper is based in Benoni and knows the Ebotse Links well, the win will give him great confidence heading into the big summer events. He has finished runner-up twice before this year, including at the Tour Championship at nearby Serengeti Estate.

“I’ve been playing solid golf for a while and I played solid enough the whole week, I was just trying to give myself opportunities, keep the ball in play and give myself a chance,” Moolman said.

“Finishing second at the Wild Coast a few weeks back, I made some mistakes down the back nine, but I learnt from that and how to stay strong.

“Now that I’ve won, you start believing you can win again and that you belong here. I’m looking forward to the summer events,” Moolman said.

Although he finished fourth, two shots off the pace, Sean Bradley will remember the final round for a long time as he began with a double-bogey at the first hole, but then made a hole-in-one at the par-three eighth. He then rounded off his round with a massive eagle putt, from off the green, on the last hole, finishing with a 63 that put him right into contention.

American Dan Erickson claimed third place on 13-under, signing for a 67 after he could only make par on the last three holes.

HARARE, Zimbabwe – An excellent day with the putter saw Albert Venter to a superb final-round 66 and a playoff for the FBC Zimbabwe Open at Royal Harare Golf Club, with the 26-year-old then sinking a 16-foot birdie putt on the second playoff hole to claim his maiden Sunshine Tour title on Sunday.

Venter had to hold off Stefan Wears-Taylor, who also shot 66 in the final round, and Louis Albertse (67) in the playoff after the trio all finished the R2 million tournament on 10-under-par.

They all parred the 18^th in the first playoff hole, but on their next attempt, Venter spun a sand-wedge from the fairway back to 16 feet from the pin and then nailed the birdie putt, with Albertse and Wears-Taylor unable to make their shorter putts.

Venter’s success with the putter was unexpected because the Silver Lakes golfer struggled with the short stick in the third round.

“I knew I needed to just keep grinding today, follow my processes, and my goal was to just get in contention on the back nine,” Venter, who began the final round five shots off the lead, said.

“I was playing with the American, Dan Erickson, and he was off to a flyer – six-under after seven holes. So he was the guy to catch and I just tried to stay in touching distance of him.

“Then I caught fire on the back nine and I just kept following my processes, just keeping the ball in play, hit the greens and make the putts.

“Yesterday [Saturday] was a really bad putting day – 31 putts – so last night I spent an hour or two on the green and I found something. The putter paid off today with the prize,” Venter said.

Venter finished runner-up (his best finish on tour) in last September’s Sunshine Tour Invitational at Centurion Country Club, but two missed cuts in October probably cost him a top-50 finish in the final 2021/22 order of merit.

His victory on Sunday means none of that matters now and he said his big breakthrough felt surreal.

“At the moment, it’s still kind of surreal. To get to this professional level is hard enough, but then to win is a whole another level.

“It’s about belief and I can only thank my supporters, my coaching staff and family, who felt I was good enough. I would not be in this position without them,” Venter said.

Erickson was still in the lead when he birdied the par-three 15^th, which Venter bogeyed, but the American was knocked out of contention by a bogey-bogey finish.

Wears-Taylor birdied 16 and 17 to claim the outright lead, but then bogeyed the last to force him into a playoff, with Albertse staying alive as he birdied 18.

Venter’s round was built around three successive birdies from the seventh hole, and he then burnt up the back nine with a run of four straight birdies from the 11^th hole. Despite dropping a shot at 15, he stuck around to the bitter end.

Overnight leader Luca Filippi faded into seventh position after shooting a 75, while Louis de Jager and Jaco Ahlers joined Erickson in fourth place, two shots behind, after they both made 70s on Sunday.

The Stormers showed last weekend just how effective a powerful scrum is against the Glasgow Warriors, but Bulls coach Jake White also wants to use the lineout to attack the Scottish playoff contenders in their United Rugby Championship match at Loftus Versfeld on Friday night.

The Glasgow scrum struggled to take the heat put on them by Frans Malherbe and Steven Kitshoff in Cape Town, but White said on Thursday that the Bulls don’t have the luxury of Springbok props, so they will be looking to the lineout to also put the Warriors under pressure.

The visitors’ lineout is, however, led by the lighthouse-like figure of veteran lock Richie Gray, who has played 67 Tests for Scotland.

“We don’t have the luxury of a great scrum with incumbent Test props, but we need to find a way to use it as an attacking platform, be clever with it and not just use it to bail us out and get a penalty,” White said.

“It’s a significant difference between how rugby is played locally and overseas, where the scrum is used as an attacking platform, compared to being used here as a way to get a penalty and territory.

“But the lineout can also be used as a different form of attack, like the Canterbury Crusaders or Leicester Tigers do – you can maul, go off the top, come round the front or the back, or use overthrows.

“It’s an area of the game that has changed a lot because the referees are strict on the backs not coming in too soon. So you can have changes of tempo there, you can play quickly if you want,” White said.

While the selection of a counter-attacker like Canan Moodie to replace the injured Kurt-Lee Arendse at fullback shows that the Bulls will still want to give the ball plenty of air, especially if Glasgow – who like to kick for territory – are inaccurate with the boot, White said he had chosen Morne Steyn as his starting flyhalf for a specific reason he did not want to divulge.

Perhaps Steyn’s ability to mail monster kicks deep into opposition territory and then putting the Warriors lineout under pressure is the reason.

And then when the visitors are ailing from altitude in the second half, impact players like Chris Smith, Cyle Brink and Harold Vorster can come off the bench and play some exciting rugby.

Bulls team:Canan Moodie, James Verity-Amm, Lionel Mapoe, Cornal Hendricks, Madosh Tambwe, Morne Steyn, Zak Burger; Elrigh Louw, Arno Botha, Marcell Coetzee (CAPT), Ruan Nortje, Walt Steenkamp, Mornay Smith, Johan Grobbelaar, Gerhard Steenekamp. IMPACT-Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Simphiwe Matanzima, Dylan Smith, Janko Swanepoel, Cyle Brink, Embrose Papier, Chris Smith, Harold Vorster.

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.