Ken Borland

SUN CITY, North-West – This year’s SuperSport Ladies Challenge at Sun City from Wednesday has been moved from the Gary Player Country Club to Lost City, and Tandi McCallum reckons that is a boost for her chances, even though she finished runner-up in this event at GPCC in 2020.

That year, McCallum was edged out in a playoff by Lejan Lewthwaite, but the Johannesburger won the Sun International Ladies Challenge at Lost City in 2014.

“I’ve actually done better at Lost City, I won there in 2014 and I prefer it to the Gary Player Country Club, which I know a lot of connoisseurs will frown on. I just enjoy being there, it suits my eye and it rewards golfers who hit it very straight and putt well,” McCallum said.

“Lost City demands that you be a bit more strategic, it’s very firm on the side of the mountain and the undulating fairways mean you have got to be in good positions. The key is to be on the fairways, but they are so hard that you can’t overpower the course. I find Gary Player Country Club has more generous fairways.”

Fortunately for much of the field playing in the SuperSport Ladies Challenge, they will be coming from the Dimension Data Ladies Pro-Am at Fancourt, which required some advanced golfing skills and would have battle-hardened the Sunshine Ladies Tour contingent.

McCallum played solidly enough to finish in a tie for 13^th on 10-over-par, the winning score being Kylie Henry’s three-under-par 213. The Scotswoman is teeing it up again at Lost City, but many of the other European golfers have moved on to the Ladies European Tour, which has an event in Morocco starting on Thursday.

“I didn’t play super-well on day three when there were fantastic conditions but a very challenging set-up,” McCallum said. “But it was good to shake off any rust and I was very happy to make the cut.

“It’s great for us South Africans to be able to compare ourselves with the international players, but this week there is an overlapping LET event. Generally our tour has international players who don’t have full cards in Europe, so if they get a start over there then they will take it. But we will still have a very competitive field at Lost City.”

Veteran Lee-Anne Pace, who charged up the leaderboard on the final day at Fancourt to finish second, will be looking to go one better this week and LPGA star and 2022 SuperSport Ladies Challenge winner Paula Reto is also in the field.

A young up-and-coming talent to watch is 19-year-old Gabrielle Venter, who finished tied-fifth at the Dimension Data Ladies Pro-Am, her best ever Sunshine Ladies Tour result.

Ockie Strydom had been runner-up 19 times and won just once on the Sunshine Tour, but the 37-year-old did the business in highly impressive fashion on the back nine in the final round to win the Alfred Dunhill Championship by two strokes at Leopard Creek on Sunday.

Remarkably, it was a double-bogey on the par-four ninth that sparked Strydom, as he responded immediately to losing the outright lead with two brilliant approach shots, after crunching drives, to set up back-to-back birdies on the 10th and 11th holes.

Strydom short-sided himself on the ninth with his approach to the left of the flag, the ball spinning back into the water.

But he recovered to produce an impeccably solid back nine, with further birdies on the 13th and 14th holes and seldom looking in any danger of dropping a shot.

“It was probably the most solid nine holes I have played,” Strydom said. “After the double, I said to my caddy Jaris [Kruger, his brother-in-law], that it’s fine, we are still in there and we can pull it back.

“And then we did it in the first two holes of the back nine and just kept the foot on the pedal after that. I’ve been in this situation a lot and I know how to manage it. I was just able to go back to the game I know.

“I’ve put in a lot of hard work on my mental toughness and Jaris is a legend who really helped me. We discussed everything and I didn’t play any silly shots,” Strydom said.

Strydom closed with a three-under 69 to finish on 18-under-par, and while the victory was relatively easy in the end – “having a three-shot lead tends to take the nerves away,” Strydom admitted – the Serengeti Golf and Wildlife Estate representative had numerous challengers to worry about through his round.

Scott Jamieson was tied for the lead with Strydom overnight and it was only after eight holes that the experienced Scotsman slipped behind never to return. Jamieson bogeyed the last three holes to post a 76 and finish in a tie for 11th on 11-under, on a final day in which he just never loosened up.

Dean Burmester, two behind at the start of the day, cut the gap to one when he curled in a 27-foot birdie putt on the 10th, but he immediately dropped a shot on the 11th and could only post a level-par 72 to finish on 13-under, tied for seventh with Louis Oosthuizen, who eagled the 11th and also picked up birdies on the 13th and 15th holes to get to 14-under and provide a brief threat. But the 2005 runner-up finished par-par-bogey.

Spaniard Adrian Otaegui, a four-time European Tour winner, produced the only bogey-free round of the day to put Strydom under the most pressure.

Otaegui, beginning the day on 12-under, moved to within a shot of the lead with birdies on the second and third holes, and picked up another shot on the par-four 11th. But crucially, he could not gather any other birdies coming in, until he scored a four at the par-five closing hole.

His 68 left him on 16-under and alone in second place, one shot ahead of Englishman Laurie Canter, whose 64 was the low round of the day. He started with a bogey, but then fired seven birdies and an eagle at the par-four sixth to claim third place.

South Africans Oliver Bekker (71) and Branden Grace (70) at times applied pressure, but both had crucial misses on the back nine as they finished on 14-under, sharing fourth place with Canadian Aaron Cockerill (69).

South African MJ Daffue and Frenchman David Ravetto rounded out the top-10 on 12-under-par, both closing with 69s.

Strydom, the man of the day, however, now has a DP World Tour exemption for two years, when his goals for 2023 were a bit lower – the Challenge Tour.

“It means everything to me, all the South Africans on the Sunshine Tour dream of winning a co-sanctioned event and I always wanted to do it here,” Strydom said.

“I had planned to play a bit on the Challenge Tour, but it has all just changed in the space of a week. I probably need to do some fresh planning.

“My Dad said he would be satisfied if I win one of these co-sanctioned events, I’ve finally done it and to do it at Leopard Creek feels extra good.

“‘Winner of a co-sanctioned event’ has a nice ring to it, but I’m not sure I’m ready for it,” the perennial bridegroom laughed.

Judging by his performance on Sunday afternoon, Strydom looks ready for anything.

SUN CITY, North-West (13 October) – Ockie Strydom is the owner of 37 top-10 finishes on the Sunshine Tour and was the runner-up at the Gary Player Country Club in the 2019 Sun City Challenge, so it is never too surprising to see him at the top of the leaderboard as he was after the first round of the Blue Label Challenge at the famous 7831-yard course on Wednesday.

In a tournament using a modified Stableford scoring system, Strydom shot a wonderful seven-under-par 65, his eight birdies and just one bogey giving him a total of 15 points. That left the 36-year-old one point ahead of Ruan Korb (66), while Jayden Schaper and Rhys Enoch also shot six-under-par but finished on 13 points because they did not have an eagle on their cards, as Korb did on the par-five 11^th.

Strydom’s solitary bogey came on the first hole, and he stayed on minus-one points through the next four holes, but thereafter the Serengeti golfer found the conditions and very warm temperatures much to his liking with three successive birdies from the sixth hole. He was especially potent on the back nine, where he collected five birdies.

“On the first hole I hit two in the bush and I thought ‘here we go!’. But I kept calm and then I changed my ball after five holes because that one wasn’t really working. I then got a lucky bounce on the sixth green and I just started making birdies,” Strydom said. “I was hitting it nicely off the tee, finding the fairways and then hitting my irons quite close. The putting then works out itself.”

Strydom is known to be a big hitter off the tee and, with summer rains having arrived in the Pilanesberg, the fact that there is not as much run on the fairways as in winter has suited him.

“Most of the previous events here have been in winter, when the ball really runs on the fairways. But now it’s softer, it feels a club or two longer that normal. But I like that because it means not everyone can attack the greens from long distance. They are very soft greens though and the ball either comes back or stops dead,” Strydom said.

The man who made his breakthrough win at the 2019 Vodacom Origins of Golf Series event at Sishen has enjoyed a solid season and is 30^th on the Order of Merit. His tee-to-green work has been consistent, and now, as the big money co-sanctioned events loom, his putter has started coming to life.

“I was a bit off at the beginning of the season, slowly getting better and I have not struggled from tee-to-green in the last six months. My putting was a bit of a problem though and my coach Doug Wood has been working very hard at it. I’m starting to get more comfortable with the process,” Strydom said.

Toto Thimba Junior has returned from his bucket-list trip to St Andrews for the Dunhill Links Championship in fine fettle and he shot a four-under-par 68 for 11 points.

Welshman Enoch has also returned to the Sunshine Tour, for the first time since winning the KitKat Group Pro-Am in March, and has come off an up-and-down European Tour campaign. But he looked in excellent touch on Wednesday, his only dropped shot coming on the par-five 18^th, which was his ninth hole.

Scores – https://sunshinetour.com/tournament-information/?tourn=BLCH&season=221S&report=tmentry~season=221S~alphaorder~#/home