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It was around 13:30 on Sunday afternoon when Rhys Enoch’s wife, Lynn, sent him a text saying she was sorry but she couldn’t keep her eyes open and was going to have a Sunday nap, and that she hopes he finishes strong in the final round of the Kit Kat Group Pro-Am. He did. He went out and won.

Enoch birdied his final three holes – including a chip-in birdie from the bunker on 17 –  on the East Course to close with a 67 and win by one stroke on 12 under par.

South Africa’s Dean Burmester had already finished in the clubhouse on 11 under par with a 66, but Enoch had to endure watching Jake Redman stand over a roughly two-metre birdie putt on the last to force a playoff. Redman missed the putt to sign for a 72 and share second with Burmester.

“I fully expected Jake to make that putt. I’m sad for him that he missed, but obviously I’m delighted I came out on top,” said Enoch, who added to his 2018 Cape Town Open triumph on the Sunshine Tour.

“I’m over the moon. I really didn’t think I was that close to the lead. When we came up 18 with the leaderboard there, my caddie said to me, ‘Don’t look left. Just focus on your putt’. So I did and made the putt for birdie on 18. Then Jake unfortunately missed his and I’d won.”

With a fast start by the likes of Luke Brown and Redman, Enoch admits he didn’t think he was in the running for the title early in the final round.

“They all shot off to -14 and I was around -8 or -9, and I thought it might have slipped from me. Then I got to 15 and saw I was only two behind. But then I three-putted for bogey to be three behind with three to play. An then came those three birdies. This game is crazy and winning is not easy, but I managed to get over the line today.”

And one of the first things he did was text his delighted wife back, with a photo of him and the trophy.

“This win is extremely satisfying. You know, it’s been really tough with this pandemic. It’s been wonderful to be at home and spend time with my wife and my son Carter. But at the same time it’s been stressful with my golf. It’s just feels great to win. This is like a confirmation of the hard work paying off. And to be able to win on a quality golf course like this makes it even sweeter.” – Michael Vlismas

Photo Credit: Tyrone Winfield/Sunshine Tour

Storm clouds forced the suspension of the second round of the Sunshine Tour’s Kit Kat Group Pro-Am on Saturday, but not before Johannesburg professional Luke Brown was able to find the silver lining.

Dangerous weather at Royal Johannesburg and Kensington Golf Club forced a suspension of play at 16:10, and the round will have to be completed on Sunday morning before the start of the final round.

But Brown was able to make it into the clubhouse with a sublime seven-under-par 65 that carried him to the top of the leaderboard on 10 under par, and which has him chasing his maiden victory on the Sunshine Tour. Jake Redman is currently tied for the lead on 10 under with three holes of his second round to complete.

“You’re always pleased with a round of seven under, but on this course and with the conditions as gusty as they were today, I’m super pleased,” said Brown, a two-time winner on the Big Easy IGT Challenge Tour who is now looking to make the step up at Sunshine Tour level.

He started his round with an eagle on the par-five first hole, then built on that with four birdies in six holes from the fifth. His only bogey of the round came on the fearsome par-four 11^th, but he made up for that by chipping in for birdie on the 16^th – following his playing partner Mitchell who did the same just moments earlier – and then finishing with a birdie on 18.

“My wedge play was very good today. I hit so many wedges to inside of two metres. The bogey on 11 didn’t bother me too much because that is just such a tough hole, and the flag was in a very difficult position. Overall I was pleased to have played the par fives a bit better than I did in the first round, stating with the eagle on the first.”

Redman will still have an opportunity to have his say when he wraps up the final three holes of his second round on Sunday morning. Callum Mowat and Malcolm Mitchell are currently next best in the clubhouse on eight under. Young star Jayden Schaper is at seven under with four holes of his second round still to come, while Garrick Higgo will feel he’s not out of it at six under with five holes of his second round still to play.

It’s a busy leaderboard around Brown, but he’s doing his best to keep focused on the only thing he can control.

“In the end it’s still just you and the golf course. Sure, it’s a step up from the Big Easy IGT Challenge Tour. The courses are set up harder and the competition is tougher, but this is where I wanted to be at the start of the tournament. So all I can do is just play my own game and not worry too much about everybody else.” – Michael Vlismas

Photo Credit: Tyrone Winfield/Sunshine Tour.

Dean Burmester and Ockie Strydom shared the lead with their rounds of seven-under-par 65 in the first round of the Kit Kat Group Pro-Am at Royal Johannesburg and Kensington’s East Course on Friday.

They finished a weather-interrupted day one stroke clear of the South African duo of Malcolm Mitchell and Jake Redman, and Welshman Rhys Enoch.

The first tournament of the Sunshine Tour’s 2021 calendar has drawn a strong contingent of young stars including Garrick Higgo, who is two shots off the lead. Jayden Schaper opened with a round of four under 68 and Wilco Nienaber signed for a 69.

Burmester, playing the back nine first, started strong with birdies at holes 10 and 11 which are amongst the longest back-to-back par fours in golf.

“A birdie-birdie start is always nice, especially on those two holes. That definitely boosted the confidence,” he said. “Those are not the easiest par fours out there. For many years they were the longest back-to-back par fours in the southern hemisphere. You need good tee shots on both.”

He capped off his round with an equally strong finish of three birdies in the final four holes.

“When it comes to the front nine here you always feel like you want to take advantage because you have three par fives there. I didn’t birdied the par-five first, so it was nice to get the other two.”

While it was a bogey-free start for Burmester, he still feels there’s room for improvement.

“There’s always work to be done. I didn’t hit too many fairways, but when I missed I was on the right side so I was able to keep giving myself chances. But it’s just so good to be back playing on the Sunshine Tour again, and back at Royal Johannesburg and Kensington as well.”

Strydom, who played his first full round of golf last week after recovering from a back injury, had a more adventurous start with two birdies, two bogeys and an eagle in his opening six holes. His short game came to the fore with that eagle on the par-five sixth where he holed a lob wedge from a difficult downhill lie at the back of the green. Then he finished his round with three straight birdies.

“This is not an easy course. You’ve really got to keep your head around here, so seven under is a good round for me,” he said.

“I’m in a good space with my game. As I’ve recovered from my back injury I’ve been working a lot more on my swing technique with my coach, and it’s starting to show in the ball flight. I have a lot more confidence in terms of my swing and knowing exactly where the ball will go.”

Sunshine Tour professional Dylan Naidoo will tee it up in Friday’s first round of the Kit Kat Group Pro-Am at Royal Johannesburg and Kensington Golf Club somewhat jetlagged, but with a very clear vision regarding his future in the game.

Naidoo has just returned from the United States where he managed to secure conditional playing privileges on the Mackenzie Tour-PGA Tour of Canada after finishing tied ninth in their Qualifying School, which was played at Weston Hills Golf Club in Florida at the end of February.

It’s a massive step forward for the 23-year-old professional, who turned pro in 2019 as one of GolfRSA’s top amateur talents and who in his first season on the Sunshine Tour finished third in the Rookie of the Year race behind winner Garrick Higgo and second-placed Wilco Nienaber.

“It’s really exciting and it’s nice to know that I have it in me and have that experience now of playing in a different setting with new players. It gives me confidence for what I’m trying to do with my career,” said Naidoo, who will play the following seven tournaments on the Sunshine Tour before returning to the United States to play on the Mackenzie Tour.

“I want to be the best golfer in the world. I want to be playing on the PGA Tour and European Tour. I feel like this will open my eyes a lot and I’ll probably learn some hard lessons along the way. But it’s the way to go for me.”

Naidoo made the decision to go and qualify when the Sunshine Tour had to postpone the start of its 2021 schedule by one month because of the Coronavirus pandemic.

“I figured I can either stay here or try and find something to play overseas. Then the United States decided they would implement travel restrictions and not allow South Africans into the country from the end of January. So I had to scramble and get myself over there before these restrictions. I managed to get my things together and left on Thursday 28 January. Fortunately I already had a 10-year visa. I left on the Thursday, arrived in the US on Friday, and from that Saturday onwards they closed the borders to South Africans. So I just made it in. I played a few mini tour events and then the Qualifying School.”

There were 25 cards on offers, with only the top six gaining full status on the Mackenzie Tour and the rest earning conditional status.

“I should be guaranteed starts for at least half of their season. I wanted the top 6, but I still played well and am not going to complain. It’s a good start getting the Mackenzie Tour card because it gives you a firm hold in the US. If you play well there you can get onto the Korn Ferry Tour. My goal this year was to get some playing status on another world tour, and I’ve achieved that.” – By Michael Vlismas

Photo Credit: Carl Fourie/Sunshine Tour

By Michael Vlismas

Gary Player said change is the price of survival. But the secret for every professional golfer is to know when to change. Or in the case of multiple Sunshine Tour and Asian Tour champion Jbe Kruger, whether you should even change at all.

For Kruger, the search for change to his swing has brought him full circle to the realisation that his old swing is exactly what he needs to get back to. It’s a process he’ll continue with at this week’s Kit Kat Group Pro-Am at Royal Johannesburg and Kensington Golf Club, which begins on Friday and marks the start of the Sunshine Tour’s 2021 schedule.

“I want to get my swing natural again and go back to the root of how I used to play,” says Kruger, who has endured a frustrating few years of trying to change that foundation in the pursuit of improvement.

“My strength was always my ball striking. I was good because I hit the ball really well. I always said I just need to make putts to score well, because I knew I never had to worry about my ball striking. But the last few years that hasn’t been the case. In my desire to improve, I lost that strong point to my game.”

At 1.6 metres tall, Kruger has long been used to punching above his weight in world golf. He’s won six times in his career, and climbed to an Official World Golf Ranking high of 109. But he’s since slipped to 480^th in the world.

“The problem is that you spend a few years working on something that just isn’t working out for you. It’s almost like I’ve gone 10 000 hours in the wrong way, so there are a lot of things I now have to unlearn with my swing get rid of. It’s unnatural, and I need to get my swing back to being natural.”

Kruger points out that he is certainly not the first professional golfer to have made the mistake of trying to fix what isn’t broken.

“Take a look at Francesco Molinari. In 2018 he won his first Major and won the European Tour’s Race to Dubai. And then he decided he needed to change his swing. In 2011 Luke Donald became the first golfer in history to win both the PGA Tour and European Tour Order of Merits. But he decided that because he’d never won a Major yet, he needed to change his swing. It’s almost like you don’t trust your own process that got you there in the first place.

“I can’t understand why as golfers we all follow the same pattern. The lesson for me is that you can only get better by practising harder. If your basics are good, then practice is the only thing to get better. For me it took at least a year to change my swing, and it felt like two years to get confident with it. Now I have to unlearn that. It’s all about coming to the realisation that what brought you here will keep you here. You forget that. You feel you need to change to get better. But just practising more will make you better.”

Kruger’s desire to change back to the way he used to play is as strong as ever, and one that emerged from a simple frustration.

“You just get tired of playing bad golf. I know how good I was and how good I hit it, and I know the reason. The proof will be in these next tournaments on the Sunshine Tour. I’ve had glimpses of it coming back, but to be honest it feels like I’m only 50% there. But then again, for me that’s a 50% improvement in getting back to what I was. I don’t mean this to sound arrogant, but I was in the top 110 in the world and it didn’t feel hard for me to get there. My memory of that keeps driving me.”

And a conversation with Lee Westwood is also driving him to keep working at it.

“Just recently I spent about an hour chatting to Lee Westwood. I really like getting into other players’ heads and hearing how they think and approach things. His career seemed like it was over at one stage, and then he won the Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City. Now, when you speak to him, it’s like he’s young in spirit again. You can see in his eyes he’s just got this love for the game again. Sometimes you run on memory in this game.”

For Kruger, it’s the memory of a swing that was good enough to take a kid from Kimberley to six professional victories.

Photo Credit: Carl Fourie/Sunshine Tour

Sunshine Tour professionals JC Ritchie and Daniel van Tonder will this week reap the rewards of their home success with a chance to take on the best in world golf in the WGC-Workday Championship in Florida.

Ritchie and Van Tonder qualified for the exclusive 72-man field by virtue of their finishes of first and second respectively on the Sunshine Tour’s 2019/20 Order of Merit.

They join a South African contingent also including Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Erik van Rooyen and Louis Oosthuizen that will tee it up at The Concession Golf Club starting this Thursday. The field includes 48 of the top 50 players on the Official World Golf Ranking, including world number one Dustin Johnson, competing for a $10.5 million purse.

Ritchie won three times on the Sunshine Tour in 2019 and twice early in 2020, and will be making only his second appearance in a WGC event since finishing 76^th in the WGC-HSBC Champions in 2018.

Van Tonder was in prolific form when the Sunshine Tour emerged from the hard lockdown in August last year, winning three of the five Rise-Up Series tournaments and then adding the Investec Royal Swazi Open in October. This will be his third appearance in a WGC event and his first since 2015.

“I’ve been in Florida for about 21 days prior to this week where I’ve been working hard on my game and been getting used to the different grass and the fast greens over here,” said Van Tonder.

“I’m going to give it my best shot and hopefully bring home the trophy.” – Michael Vlismas

The Sunshine Tour, Sunshine Ladies Tour and SuperSport are building on their longstanding broadcast partnership with an even more comprehensive offering that will dramatically increase the content value for local golf fans and give South African professional golf a greater presence on the World of Champions.

From March this year, SuperSport will provide live coverage – for a minimum of two rounds and three hours daily – and highlights packages of the upcoming Sunshine Tour events as well as the Investec South African Women’s Open on the Sunshine Ladies Tour.

The broadcast partnership also includes daily tournament inserts that will showcase the professionals on the Sunshine Tour and Sunshine Ladies Tour, giving fans a world-class offering of South African professional golf at a time when physical attendance of tournaments is still not allowed under the Coronavirus health regulations.

“We are delighted to announce the growth of this partnership with SuperSport into this next phase, which is going to significantly enhance our product and bring golf fans everything they could ever want in terms of live tournament coverage, highlights and more from the Sunshine Tour and Sunshine Ladies Tour,” said Thomas Abt, Commissioner of the Sunshine Tour.

“Although this is an enhanced broadcast partnership, it is a partnership with an already longstanding supporter of South African professional golf and the Sunshine Tour. SuperSport has always been unwavering in its support of the Tour, and this is a partnership that has been deeply developed over the years by our Executive Director Selwyn Nathan, which has given us this platform upon which we can now build into new and exciting broadcast options.

“SuperSport shares our vision to enhance the entertainment value of our brand and give fans a greater insight into the lives of our professionals and we’re very pleased to be able to work with them towards achieving this goal.”

Marc Jury, CEO of SuperSport, said they were equally excited about the further development of this partnership and the chance to expand their coverage of local professional golf.

“Golf has always been an important and valued market for SuperSport, and this partnership continues our commitment to South African sport. Through our innovative content offerings, we’ll be able to showcase the incredible talent the Sunshine Tour and Sunshine Ladies Tour produces, and keep telling the story of their ongoing success.”

SUNSHINE TOUR

March 5-7: R1 000 000 Kit Kat Group Pro-Am, Royal JHB and Kensington GC

March 11-14: R1 000 000 Players Championship, Dainfern Country Club

March 18-21: R1 000 000 Gauteng Championship presented by Betway, Ebotse Links

March 24-28: R1 500 000 Serengeti Invitational, Serengeti Estates

April 22-25: R3 000 000 Limpopo Championship, Euphoria Golf & Lifestyle Estate : Co-Sanctioned with the European Challenge Tour

29 April-2 May: R3 000 000 Cape Town Open, Royal Cape Golf Club : Co-Sanctioned with the European Challenge Tour

May 6-9: R6 300 000 Dimension Data Pro-Am : Co-Sanctioned with the European Challenge Tour

SUNSHINE LADIES TOUR

May 13-16: €200 000 Investec South African Women’s Open, Westlake Golf Club

The Sunshine Tour has appointed 30South Eyewear as the official eyewear supplier to the Tour for 2021.

The Proudly South African company was founded in 2017 with the goal of providing high quality yet affordable eyewear made with the same materials as the world’s leading eyewear brands.

It has now added golf to its steadily expanding eyewear offering that supports a variety of sports such as cricket, rugby, sailing, running, rowing, fishing, mountaineering, climbing, skiing, kayaking, kitesurfing and mountain biking.

30South Eyewear currently has Sunshine Tour and European Tour champions Darren Fichardt and Dean Burmester as its leading golf ambassadors, as well as Sunshine Tour winners Merrick Bremner, Thriston Lawrence, Jacques Kruyswijk and Hennie du Plessis, rising Sunshine Tour stars Luca Filippi, Dylan Naidoo and Deon Germishuys, Big Easy IGT Challenge Tour winner Vaughn van Deventer, and South Africa’s number one ranked amateur Casey Jarvis.

“We’re absolutely delighted to be named the official eyewear supplier to the Sunshine Tour and to be able to support South African professional golf and its incredible golfers as they proudly fly the country’s flag on the fairways,” said Richard McEnery, who co-founded 30South with his childhood friend Jamie Cockayne.

“South African golfers are amongst our country’s greatest ambassadors as they compete all over the world and are regularly at the top of leaderboards. This is an amazing opportunity for us to partner with the world-class brand that is the Sunshine Tour and bring a Proudly South African product to the success story that is South African professional golf.”

Thomas Abt, Commissioner of the Sunshine Tour, welcomed 30South Eyewear as a partner to the Tour.

“We’re very pleased to have 30South Eyewear as a partner on the Sunshine Tour, and as a company which shares our vision of being a local brand with a global impact. Our members are equally excited to partner with a company that is investing in South African professional golf and which recognises the value our professionals offer as arguably South Africa’s most consistently successful sportsmen week in and week out around the world.”

Brandon Stone was delighted with his performance as he showed all his battling qualities to finish second at the 2021 Omega Dubai Desert Classic.

Richard Sterne turned the form book on its head to reach the top of the leaderboard after a brilliant round of 64 on the opening day of the 2021 Omega Dubai Desert Classic.