INVESTEC SA OPEN
Naidoo Seizes the Moment And shoots the first 61 in SA Open history. By Stuart McLean
the 1995 World Cup rugby semifinal in the middle of July between the Spring- boks and France. But golf has suffered disproportionately. The Nelson Man- dela Championship was plagued by rain in December 2012/13, with one at Royal Durban reduced to 36 holes on a shortened layout. Down the coast at Southbroom only one round was pos- sible when they hosted the SA Women’s Open for the first and only time in 2013. At the beginning of the week every- thing was primed for the return of a magnificently renovated DCC to the Open roster for the first time in 15 years. And then came a cloudburst soon after midnight on Tuesday which flooded the par-4 16th fairway and other parts of the course. Kevin Stone and his maintenance team arrived on site at 3am and worked round the clock for He showed the world what a great champion he is by winning the playoff with one of the finest pitch shots I’ve seen under such life- changing circumstances. more than 24 hours to pump out the water and have the course playable for the first round on Thursday. Tourna- ment officials were expecting to play 16 as a par 3 and were amazed to see how dry the fairway was that morning. Just being able to play golf gave the Open an immediate lift, and there was encouraging spectator support. It was set up for a thrilling Sunday finish, with 10 players within four shots of the lead, including 21-year-old Christiaan Maas, who could have become the first ama- teur since Denis Hutchinson in 1959 to claim the trophy. He was two back of Naidoo and Canter, alongside Darren Fichardt, looking to win his first Open at age 49.
D urban Country Club has witnessed 18 South African Opens, far more than any other course, yet none per- haps as momentous as the abbreviated 2025 Investec edition where Dylan Naidoo became the first local player of colour to lift the historic trophy. In an unexpected sudden-death playoff on a rain-soaked Sunday he followed in the footsteps of two great golfers of Indian descent, Papwa Sew- golum and Vijay Singh, who had briefly left their mark on this championship in a previous century. Papwa, a hero of the Durban Indian community, came within one shot of what would have been an apartheid- shattering victory in the 1963 Open at DCC, losing the title to Retief Waltman. Singh won the first Open played as part of the European Tour, the Fijian becom- ing the first player of colour to triumph. That was in 1997 at Glendower, a year before Naidoo was born. Naidoo knew everything about Papwa and his struggles to compete in the 1960s under the apartheid regime, when Papwa needed a permit to travel outside Natal. Naidoo was a member of the Sunshine Tour’s Papwa Sewgolum Class after he turned pro in 2019. This was one of the tour’s transformation programmes providing support for golfers of colour. The Open routinely throws up a sur- prise victor, and Naidoo would qualify as one of them simply because he has the highest World Ranking of any win- ner in the co-sanctioned era. He was No 466 coming into the week, so his tri- umph speaks to a sense of destiny. He could have won it on Saturday evening had he not lipped out a short birdie putt in the gloaming around the 18th green. His miss didn’t seem too con- sequential at the time, but when the heavens opened on Sunday morning
and the fourth round was cancelled, the thought of it must have hit him hard. Yet it offered Naidoo the stage at 3pm on Sunday to step up once again on the iconic 18th, under immense pressure in a playoff with No 53-ranked English- man Laurie Canter, and show the world what a great champion he is by winning the playoff with one of the finest pitch shots I’ve seen under such life-chang- ing circumstances. On the Friday he had become the first player to shoot 61 in the Open, taking advantage of a 10am starting time to post 10 birdies and an eagle, a remark- able comeback after an opening 70 had left him seven shots behind the lead- ers. Beginning his round at the tenth, Naidoo went to the turn in 30 with six birdies. He appeared to have lost mo- mentum when he bogeyed the fifth on his second nine, but then had four 3s to the finish, including an eagle at eight. That propelled him into the last group on Saturday. This was the first-ever Open playoff at DCC, and the first Open to be con- cluded over 54 holes. (Every previous Open since 1908 had been 72.) Weather had never before intervened as drasti- cally as it did on that Sunday. I knew early that morning that play might not be possible when I left my B&B at Mount Edgecombe and saw rivers of water flowing across the fairways on The Woods course. Rain clouds do seem to gather omi- nously over Durban when the city hosts major sporting events. Think of
954 World ranking of Ryggs Johnston when he won 2024 Australian Open
466 World ranking of Dylan Naidoo when he won 2025 SA Open
Note: SA Open champion with the highest World Ranking at the time of his victory was Clinton Whitelaw, No 580 when he triumphed at Glendower in February 1993.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CARL FOURIE / SUNSHINE TOUR
88 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
MARCH/APRIL 2025
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