Ken Borland

Englishman Andy Sullivan said he would be happy to play all his golf in Johannesburg after he added the Joburg Open title on Sunday to the South African Open he won seven weeks ago at Glendower, the 28-year-old sealing a two-shot triumph with a brilliant 66.

Sullivan won the national open in a dramatic playoff with Charl Schwartzel, impressing with his happy demeanour despite the tension down the stretch, and yesterday he was once again relaxed as he dropped just one shot in making up a three-shot deficit.

“I’ve been working hard with my coach and psychologist, but enjoying myself too. Every time I’m in contention, I wish I could bottle those emotions, it’s an unbelievable feeling and I seem to thrive on it.

“I wish I could play in Johannesburg every week! I felt really good down the stretch at Glendower and even better today. There wasn’t any pressure, I was very relaxed and it was just me and ‘Macca’ [caddy Sean McDonagh] having a laugh, a Saturday afternoon stroll on the golf course,” Sullivan said after his second European Tour title.

There were a handful of golfers in contention in the final round, with the lead changing hands several times, but the most serious challenges came from fellow Englishmen Anthony Wall and David Howell.

But both made a couple of crucial errors in the closing holes.

Wall bogeyed 15 after his approach slid off the green into the reeds surrounding the dam in front of the putting surface, while his drive on the final hole went under the trees on the left, forcing him to settle for par when he really needed at least a birdie to put pressure on Sullivan.

Howell sent his drive into the water on 14 which led to bogey, and then missed a crucial five-foot birdie putt on 15.

Sullivan himself was holding a tenuous one-shot lead when he found the water with his approach shot on the par-four 11^th, but a brilliant 25-foot pressure putt saw him limit the damage to just a bogey.

The man from the English midlands then closed out a thrilling win with a top-class finish, birdies on 15 and 18 sealing victory.

There was a tense moment on 18 when he left his eagle putt eight feet short of the hole and was left with a tricky, and crucial, birdie putt.

“I knew if I got a birdie on the last I’d have a really good chance of winning, but I left myself with a bit more than I would have liked. But I did not believe my second win would come so quickly, I thought it was unbelievable to win the SA Open but this is even better,” a beaming Sullivan said.

Overnight leader Wallie Coetsee missed several birdie putts as he shot a one-under-par 71 and finished in the bunch of runners-up on 15-under – Wall, Howell, Ireland’s Kevin Phelan and fellow South African Jaco van Zyl.

The iron play of Coetsee was just not sharp enough to get him closer to the flags, and he also missed out on one of the entries to the Open Championship which went to Sullivan, Wall and Howell after the tie-breaker of world golf ranking had been applied.

“I’ve never played in a major championship before, so obviously that’s massive. It will also be nice to put a stop to the stick of my manager and caddy, who have both played in majors, and it’s at St Andrew’s, the home of golf, on top of that,” Sullivan said.

One of the biggest smiles in golf is only getting bigger.

South African Open champion Andy Sullivan returns to Johannesburg and the Joburg Open starting today doorstepping the top-50 in the world and a ticket to the major championships, which means he is confident he can contend at the co-sanctioned Sunshine Tour/European Tour event at the Royal Johannesburg and Kensington Golf Club.

“Finishing fifth here last year and then winning the SA Open at Glendower down the road in December makes it nice to come back. I’m keen to have a crack at it and I’m full of confidence. I’m swinging it quite well after a two-week break, so I’m looking forward to this week.

“I’ve never played a major championship. To play the Open in your own country would be absolutely fantastic. I don’t want to put too much emphasis on it, because I think I’ve done that in the past and underperformed. For me, it’s about going out there and trying to enjoy myself,” Sullivan said on Wednesday.

The 73^rd-ranked Sullivan is the highest-ranked golfer in the field, but the local challenge will be a strong one with the Joburg Open title being won by a South African six times, including the last five years consecutively, in the eight-year history of the event.

The defending champion, George Coetzee, will bring his intimate knowledge of the course and is eager to mount a strong defence of his maiden European Tour crown, while Richard Sterne, bidding to become the first golfer to win three Joburg Opens, and Thomas Aiken are also amongst the favourites.

“Every week I’m posting one or two good numbers, it’s just a matter of putting four together. Hopefully being comfortable with the course will put me in good stead for this week,” Coetzee said.

Aiken is out to register his fourth European Tour win, but he acknowledges that there are a host of extremely talented South African golfers looking to use the Joburg Open as a stepping stone.

“There is a big field this week and a lot of youngsters, and that’s really what this tournament was made to be. It aims to give a lot of people the chance to play a European Tour event.

“Funnily enough, the more people you have, the lower the cuts get. It’s renowned here that the cut is low, and it shows that everyone out there can play. When you have more than 200 players, there will be 100 that play well, so the margins are very small. That’s the beauty of the game, you don’t see the same guy winning every week. That’s the nature of it. It would be boring if the same guy won every week, although I’d love to be the person who does that!” Aiken said.

It’s been a very dry February in Johannesburg, so the 210 golfers teeing off today will have an office that will provide plenty of run, making an already fairly short course even shorter. But those Royal Johannesburg and Kensington greens are as small as ever.

Thomas Aiken has been watching the Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City since he was seven years old and now he will finally be playing in the event following his nailbiting triumph in the Sunshine Tour’s Order of Merit in the final event, the South African Open, at Glendower Golf Club at the weekend.

Aiken faced a terrifying two-putt from about 90 feet on the last hole for par to ensure a top-10 finish in the SA Open and enough of a payday to overtake Danie van Tonder in the final Order of Merit, and the 31-year-old left himself with a knee-wobbling 10-footer, which he curled into the hole.

The three-time winner on the European Tour eventually finished in a six-way tie for fifth and earned R430 000, while Van Tonder shot a 75 in the final round to finish tied-55^th and made R52 500. That meant Aiken beat Van Tonder to first place on the Order of Merit by just over R157 000, but if he had bogeyed the last hole, that one stroke would have left him R1300 behind his young compatriot.

“I didn’t want to know the permutations but I knew a top-10 finish may be enough, so I was aiming top-five to make sure. With three holes to play, I knew I was tied eighth or ninth, so I said to myself that the worse-case scenario was three pars.

“I made good putts on 16 and 17, but then a really poor iron shot on 18, because I was trying to be too safe. I was far enough from the hole that I couldn’t see it and then my second putt was a good 10 feet away. It was maybe worse than having a putt to win a tournament, but I managed to make one of my best putts ever,” Aiken said.

“Winning the Order of Merit is something I’ve been looking forward to since I started playing on the Sunshine Tour in 2002. I’ve been close before and it’s nice to finally get it under the belt. Winning the Sid Brews Trophy is very nice and winning the money-list is obviously a feat because this is one of the five main tours in the world. But it also comes with substantial perks that can make your career – I’m into the British Open, the Memorial, three World Golf Championship events and the Nedbank Golf Challenge, which I’ve dreamed about playing in since I was a kid in the early 90s,” the born-and-bred Johannesburger said.

Winning the Sunshine Tour Order of Merit means Aiken, who has a full card on the European Tour, must have sacrificed to so strongly support his local tour and he said it was because he loves the grand old courses that so many of the co-sanctioned events are played on.

Glendower is certainly one of those and Royal Johannesburg and Kensington, where he will tee it up in the Joburg Open from February 26, is too, but he will sadly miss out on the Africa Open at the old-style East London Golf Club because of his qualification for the WGC Cadillac Championship at the Blue Monster in Florida at the same time.

When Van Tonder shot 78 in the first round at Glendower, his Order of Merit hopes seem to have been dashed, but he birdied his last three holes in the second round to make the cut and Aiken said this typified the gutsy youngster.

“Danie has played extremely well all year, there are few 23-year-olds that can be that consistent all year and he’s had multiple wins. He’s a very tenacious young man  and he has the fiery spirit to make it, he grinds through when the chips are down, he has BMT – like he showed when birdieing the last three holes to make the cut,” Aiken said.

When Charl Schwartzel walked off the 13th green at Glendower Golf Club on Sunday after his second successive birdie, he was enjoying a four-shot lead in the South African Open, his dream of a first national open title looking a near-certainty.

But  a disastrous finish that saw Schwartzel bogey both the par-threes coming in and rack up a double-bogey at 16 meant he was embroiled in a playoff with Andy Sullivan, and when the Englishman fashioned a superb approach shot from the rough and then sank a pressure 12-foot winning putt on the 18^th, the local favourite’s dream had become a nightmare.

Sullivan admitted afterwards that he was just about to leave Glendower to head for the airport and his flight to Dubai when Schwartzel began unravelling, his final-round 74 leaving him on 11-under for the tournament.

“I was nearly ready to go and I didn’t see Charl do what he did. I was reflecting on the week and thinking ‘yeah, second is good for the first tournament of the year’, but the unbelievable happened,” Sullivan said.

He went to warm-up again on the driving range, but his tee-shot in the playoff was way left and in trouble in the rough, behind the low branches of a tree. Schwartzel, however, had been ropey all day off the tee and with his irons, and he had earlier sent his playoff drive way right, even further from the fairway than Sullivan’s.

The 28-year-old from the English midlands town of Nuneaton produced a superb stroke, setting up his maiden European Tour win, as he left his second a mere 12 feet from the hole.

“I thought I was in trouble because to miss the fairway right is better on that hole, it’s a lot clearer. But I thought ‘it’s all about what I can do’ and I didn’t allow Charl’s position to have any influence on what I did.

“I only had 131 metres to the pin, but I had low branches in front of me so I had to hit a low nine-iron to keep under those. I was aiming at the grandstand and trying to cut it back, and I hit it perfectly. I thought I’d still be 20 feet from the flag, but instead I was 12 feet and pin-high,” Sullivan said.

He said it was “without a doubt” one of the best shots he has ever played, and he made it count by ramming in the putt for birdie and becoming the first English winner of the SA Open since Tommy Horton in 1970.

The man who famously won a trip into space for a hole-in-one at the KLM Open last September said he would be celebrating and “milking it for all its worth” till he was seeing space.

The enormity of his achievement, coming to the lairs of Schwartzel, Els and Grace and claiming their title, was starting to sink in for Sullivan when he spoke to the media about an hour after sinking the winning putt.

“South Africans are so good on their home turf, to beat guys like Charl, Branden and Ernie here is just unbelievable. I’ve dreamt about winning a tournament since I was a little boy and what a championship, one of the oldest in golf and with all that history, to win. To think that my name will be on that trophy forever … “

Life is great on and off the course for Sullivan, who celebrated the birth of his daughter Ruby in late 2013 and has now converted a promising 2014 season into a maiden European Tour title.

Sullivan started the final round eight behind Schwartzel and knew he had to go low to have any chance. But he was only one-under through the front nine, before a stellar four-under-par back nine, including an eagle on the short par-four 12^th catapulted him into contention.

He chipped in on 12 and was able to make birdies on the par-four 10^th and 16^th holes to earn himself R2.2 million.

Fellow Englishman Matthew Fitzpatrick began the day five off the lead in second place, but the young rookie faded to a 73 on Sunday, but will still cart off just over R400 000 for his impressive efforts.

 http://citizen.co.za/305273/schwartzel-sullivan-showdown/