Leopard Creek clubhouse overlooking the ninth and 18th greens.
winner who has a special bond with the bushveld course. Oosthuizen needed 25 birdies and one eagle to end his lengthy lean spell. This was his lowest 72-hole score on a course that used to disagree with him. He was T-2 with Schwartzel in 2005, but then missed the 36-hole cut for five straight years! Including 2010 when he was Open champion. Finally, he had another second place finish in 2014, but trailed winner Branden Grace by seven. Schwartzel looks as if he could play Leopard Creek blindfolded. He won the first Alfred Dunhill Championship played there in 2004, aged 20, in a playoff, his breakthrough European Tour triumph. In the 16 Dunhills in which he has played – he missed two of them – he has won four titles (2004-2012-2013-2015), finished runner-up five times, and been third and fourth. Three times he has missed the cut. In 58 rounds he has a stroke average of 69.43, and has broken par 49 times. His lowest round was a 64 and he had two of them on his way to a record-breaking score of 24-under 264 in his 2012 victory.
the narrative on Sunday. The Opening Swing of the DP World Tour has shown that our two oldest campaigners, Oosthuizen and 39-year- old Charl Schwartzel, are, worryingly, still leaps ahead of the younger brigade on this bigger stage. Schwartzel will be at the Masters in April as a past champion, but only one SA professional has so far qualified to play at Augusta National alongside him. That’s Erik van Rooyen, 33, who won recently on the PGA Tour. Also playing as an amateur will be Christo Lamprecht, by virtue of his British Amateur success. It’s a far cry from the year 2013 when the SA contingent at the Masters numbered as many as eight professionals. Today, however, we only have three golfers in the Top 100 of the Official World Ranking, and not a single SA golfer under the age of 30 has a Top-10 finish in a major championship. It took Oosthuizen 19 years to finally win at Leopard Creek, and he did so in an epic final round duel with Schwartzel, a four-time Alfred Dunhill
ouis Oosthuizen’s fortnight winning at Leopard Creek and in Mauritius is a clear indication he remains South Africa’s No 1 golfer, and on this kind of form it’s sad he will not be contesting three of the four major championships in 2024. Even with those back-to-back titles his world ranking only took him from No 441 to No 133, back to where he was earlier in 2023. Louis did not participate in the previous two DP World Tour events at Houghton and
Blair Atholl, had not played a tournament for more than six weeks, yet was on a
comfortably higher plane than anyone else in winning his first Alfred Dunhill Championship (18-under), and first AfrAsia Mauritius Open (17-under), on two demanding courses. He did so at 41 (the oldest champion in both), demonstrating that age is no barrier to what he still could achieve in the game. Not surprising considering that rhythmic swing of his. Although it was his impressive wedge game and smooth putting stroke that ultimately carried him through. In both tournaments Oosthuizen made his move on Saturday, with a third round 63 at Leopard Creek and 65 at Heritage’s La Reserve Links, and then controlled
THREE EAGLES IN SAME ROUND Louis Oosthuizen had three eagles in his third round of the Mauritius Open, evidently a first for him, when asked afterwards. It’s a rare achievement, the last person to do so in South Africa being Branden Grace in the 2018 SA Open at Glendower. He had five eagles in the championship, three of them at par 5s in an opening round 65. On the DP World Tour, there have been two instances of four eagles in a round.
GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA 93
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024
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