DULLSTROOM (Mpumalanga) – Darkness fell over Highland Gate Golf and Trout Estate at a terrible time for the leaders in the first round of the Vodacom Origins of Golf Highland Gate Mpumalanga event, with Louis Albertse, Kyle de Beer and Louis de Jager all being within two shots of each other with three holes left when play was suspended on Friday.
The start of play was delayed on Friday morning due to frost on the greens, and although the weather soon improved into a lovely, warm sunny day, the backlog meant the last dozen three-balls were not able to finish their opening rounds.
But Albertse played some awesome golf in the 15 holes he did get in, storming to nine-under-par with seven birdies and an eagle on the par-five eighth hole. The three-time Sunshine Tour winner, who played some fine golf in winning the pro-am that preceded the R2 million professional event, was taking an awful toll on the back nine before the sun set on his charge. Albertse birdied four of the first five holes after the turn.
De Beer, currently leading the Fortress Rookie of the Year standings, was on eight-under-par. The 26-year-old started his round on the 10th and made a hat-trick of birdies from the 11th hole, before bogeying the par-five 14th. But De Beer bounced back superbly with an eagle on the par-five 18th and further birdies on the second, fourth, fifth and sixth holes.
The experienced De Jager birdied four of his first five holes, with a bogey on the par-three third, and had just collected his second birdie of the back nine, on the 15th, to go to seven-under-par when play was called off for the day.
Another seasoned campaigner, Jacques Blaauw, had a marvellous start to his round, going four-under after six holes. He could only collect two more birdies thereafter, but a six-under 66 was still enough for a share of the clubhouse lead and continues his stunning season thus far as he is top of the Order of Merit delivered by The Courier Guy.
Nikhil Rama also shot a splendid 66, while it was also a good day for a quartet of up-and-coming stars in Kyle McClatchie, Englishman Joe Long, Luke Brown and Martin Rohwer, who all completed their rounds on five-under-par.
Three of the nine Sunshine Ladies Tour professionals who are competing in this Vodacom Origins of Golf Series event are in line to make the cut. Young Gabrielle Venter led the way for the women on Friday with a one-under-par 71, while Lora Assad was one-over and Danielle du Toit shot two-over 74.
The completion of the first round and the start of the second round will take place concurrently on Saturday, with the action resuming at 7.10am.
Sune Luus says she has regained her old energy with her strong recent form and the appointment of Mandla Mashimbyi as the new Proteas women’s coach. Photo: Mark Metcalfe (Getty Images)
A few years ago, Proteas all-rounder Sune Luus was in the throes of a terrible time in her career, battling a loss of form and confidence, as well as injury. But now the Pretoria-born star says she is rejuvenated and looking forward to a bright new future with the South African women’s team having a new coach in Mandla Mashimbyi.
Between the summers of 2020 and 2021, Luus scored just 108 runs in eight ODI innings, and in eight T20 knocks in 2021 and 2022, she scored just 88 runs. The leg-spinner also struggled with the ball: In T20s between 2021 and 2023, she bowled just 20 overs, conceding 159 runs and taking only two wickets. From 2023 to the winter of 2024, she did not bowl at all in ODIs.
But her best form has returned as she scored 65 and an epic 109 in the one-off Test against India last year in Chennai and was the dominant batter in one-day cricket in the last domestic season, scoring 359 runs in six innings, at an average of 119, for the Titans. She has also regained confidence in her bowing by switching to off-spin and the 29-year-old was her team’s most economical bowler in the T20 competition.
“You’re always going to get ups-and-downs in your career and it was a tough time. I kinda came to the end of my bowling leg-spin, and it was always very important to me to be able to contribute in all three departments.
“We now have a new national coach in Mandla and he has slotted right in and brought a new energy. I really enjoy that because the way I specifically play my game, I like to play with energy and feed off the youngsters.
“Now that I’m in my 14th year of international cricket, I’m playing with confidence again. I’m not going to be training as much, for me it’s about keeping in touch with my game and fine-tuning it. You need to back your skills. And when any of the youngsters come to me, hopefully I can add some of that confidence and mental strength to their games,” Luus told kenborland.com in an exclusive interview after she won the Titans Player of the Year award in Centurion.
While the South African women’s team has become much more of a force in world cricket since Luus started playing for the Proteas in 2012, they have not yet been able to win an ICC global event.
They reached the finals of both the 2023 and 2024 T20 World Cups, but lost to Australia and New Zealand respectively. In 2017 they reached the semifinals of the 50-over World Cup for the first time since 2000, and made the last four again in 2022.
“Obviously winning finals is now the next step we want to take as a team in this new era,” Luus said. “We’ve managed to get over our semifinals thing, but fallen short in two finals now. So we’ve managed to get stronger in winning semifinals, and now that we’ve been there in two finals, hopefully we can now win one of those too.
“I believe Mandla will help us get to that next level, winning trophies was one of his strengths when he was the coach of the Titans men’s team. The first T20 final we were in, it was kinda a case of just being chuffed to be there, but the second one we were really gunning for the win, but unfortunately New Zealand were just stronger than us on the day.
“We’ve never made the 50-over World Cup final and it’s now time to rectify that when the next tournament starts in September,” Luus said.
CENTURION – The second round of the KitKat Cash & Carry Pro-Am at Irene Country Club was James Mack’s time to shine as the 25-year-old fired a spectacular 10-under-par 62 on Friday to claim a two-stroke lead in the R2 million Sunshine Tour event.
Mack began the second day two strokes off the lead but birdied the first and second holes to immediately close that deficit. He then birdied four successive holes from the seventh to the 10th and then also gained a shot on the par-four 12th. Further birdies on the 15th, 17th and 18th holes sealed his phenomenal round and saw him overtake Martin Rohwer at the top of the leaderboard on 15-under-par.
Rohwer followed up his 66 in the first round with a seven-under-par 65 on Friday, taking him to 13-under. He collected nine birdies but had a double-bogey on the par-four fifth hole.
Mack’s bogey-free round was his lowest ever on tour and represents a fine comeback from missing the cut in the season’s opening event, the FBC Zim Open.
Rohwer birdied the par-five second hole but then made a six on the par-four fifth hole. But the Country Club Johannesburg golfer was then able to ease his way to four successive birdies from the seventh, and, after a birdie on the par-four 14th he enjoyed a great finish as he birdied the last three holes.
Zimbabwean visitor Kieran Vincent was in third place after shooting a 67 to reach 10-under-par, sharing that spot with Rupert Kaminski, who posted a bogey-free 66.
First-round leaders Gerhard Pepler (75 for four-under) and Leon Vorster slid down the leaderboard on Friday. Pepler stumbled to a 75 and finished the second round on four-under-par, while Vorster shot an 80 and missed the cut on one-over-par.
“Keep your feet on the ground and reach for the stars” was the catchphrase of famous American radio DJ Casey Kasem, also used by renown South African disc-jockey David Gresham, and although it comes from a time well before Casey Jarvis was born, it aptly describes what the rising star is doing on golf courses around the world at the moment.
Jarvis, who turned 20 in July, is currently firmly in the mix for the South African Open title at Blair Atholl Golf and Equestrian Estate and, at the end of a breakthrough year for one of the most decorated amateurs in local history it is his mature, measured approach that has caught the eye.
It was noticeable from the second round when the SA Open organisers began using devilishly tricky pin-placements and an inconsistent, shifting wind picked up, how adept Jarvis was at not taking on the ‘sucker-flags’ and finding the best places on the greens.
Jarvis has game, of that there can be no doubt given his stellar CV, but he also has the priceless attribute of a level head. It is that strong mentality that saw him notch his first overseas win as a professional in Austria in his last couple of weeks as a teenager, as part of his dominance of the Challenge Tour that led to him winning his DP World Tour card for the coming season.
The State Mines Country Club representative was in touching distance of the lead going into the 2022 Joburg Open at Houghton Golf Club, before fading on the weekend, but he says he is a different player to the one who left South Africa to take on Europe, and those changes were apparent as he soared up the leaderboard at Blair Atholl.
“Playing overseas is so difficult, the courses in Europe are so different to back home here in SA and you’ve got to really learn how to manage your game. I’ve learnt so much since last year’s Joburg Open,” Jarvis said.
“The Challenge Tour taught me not to be as aggressive. I learnt patience – I don’t need to hit it to five feet on every hole, which I used to want to, because my putting is good enough. I don’t need to attack all the flags, I don’t need to go for every par-five in two, I must just make sure I am straight off the tee-box.
“You’ve got to manage your game and I think I’m doing that really well this week. I can still be aggressive when I need to be and I’m happy that it all seems to be coming together,” Jarvis said.
Born in Boksburg on July 28, 2003, Casey David Jarvis has a biography that makes for riveting reading.
In 2020 he won both the South African Strokeplay Championship and the South African Amateur Championship before claiming the Freddie Tait Cup for the leading amateur at that year’s South African Open. It was a treble only achieved twice before, by the legendary Bobby Locke in 1935 and by Neville Clarke, who beat Ernie Els to those amateur crowns in 1989 but only turned pro in his senior years because he had a successful career as an electrical engineer.
If Jarvis now goes on to win the SA Open at Blair Atholl, he will join Locke, an eight-time champion who also won four British Open Championships, in rarefied air.
Jarvis’s amateur career also included winning the Junior World Cup with the South African team in 2019 as well as the African Amateur Championship back-to-back in 2021 and 2022. In 2020 he was named the America-based AmateurGolf.com Men’s Player of the Year despite not playing College golf.
Jarvis was last season’s Sunshine Tour Rookie of the Year following a season in which he also became the second-youngest golfer globally to shoot a 59 on a major tour, which he achieved at the prestigious Players Championship at Dainfern.
For such a seasoned winner, triumphing on the Challenge Tour did not come easy for Jarvis, but he showed his character with his win in Austria because it came after back-to-back runners-up finishes just a month earlier in the Czech Republic and Copenhagen.
But there is a cautionary tale in flesh at Blair Atholl of young superstars burning themselves out, in Matteo Manassero, also strongly contending for the title. The Italian won three times on the European Tour as a teenager before losing his card in 2019. Now aged 30, he is back on the DP World Tour.
“There are many things that led to my struggles, but one of the most important is that I definitely became focused on results and forgot about the process and what worked for me,” Manassero told Rapport.
“Once you start going down that spiral of needing results week after week, it gets in your head and you neither improve your game nor your results. If your game is good enough week in, week out, then your results will come.
“But expectations can mean you are only focused on results and it is easy to fall into that trap. ‘Am I improving?’ should be your only focus, not making cuts, not keeping your card, not being top-50 in the world. Those are important goals but they are not the most important thing,” Manassero warned.
Fortunately, even though Jarvis admitted the Austrian win did buck him up after the two close misses, he said winning the SA Open on Sunday will not be his be-all and end-all.
“I’m just going to stick to what I’m doing, my golf feels good and I’m very comfortable and relaxed on the course, like a social round. I will just try to stay patient.
“It’s a big mental thing. I forced it for those second-place finishes, I really wanted to win and I just put more pressure on myself when there’s already enough pressure on you.
“I took a step back in Austria and just tried to go out and see what happened. I’ve learnt not to put so much pressure on myself because then I don’t play the way I want to. After finishing second so many times, to get it done was a good feeling. But I really did not expect to be doing these things when I was still so young.
“If I don’t win the SA Open, I would have learnt a lot,” Jarvis said.
Galatians 5:25 – “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep walking in step with the Spirit.”
There is only one Christ and all things that are preached in his name must conform to his character. We can only know Christ’s character through an intimate and personal relationship with him.
How would Christ respond in situations in which you find yourself? Would he be underhanded? Would he be unforgiving and cause broken relationships?
“The value of your faith and the depth of your spiritual experience can only be measured by their practical application in your daily life. You can spend hours at mass crusades; have the ability to pray in public; quote endlessly from the Word; but if you have not had a personal encounter with the living Christ your outward acts count for nothing.” – Solly Ozrovech, A Shelter From The Storm
Replacements: Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Thomas du Toit, Vincent Koch, Salmaan Moerat, Marco van Staden, Embrose Papier, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Aphelele Fassi.
