Alfred Dunhill Championship Archives - Golf Digest Middle East

Journeyman with 19(!) runner-up finishes claims breakthrough DP World Tour victory

Golf Digest Middle East — Sun, 11 Dec 2022 18:33:28 +0000

By Ryan Herrington
If there were moments in Ockie Strydom’s career where he wondered if this was as good as it gets — a regular gig on the Sunshine Tour while making the odd start on other mini-tours and an occasional appearance on the DP World Tour — he kept them to himself. The burly 37-year-old South African put on a brave face in the wake of runner-up finish after runner-up finish. Nineteen times he had walked away from a tournament as a professional having be beaten by just one golfer, the saving grace being a victory in August 2019 at the Vodacom Origins Sishen.

But on Sunday at the Alfred Dunhill Championship, a co-sanction event between the DP World Tour and Sunshine Tour, there was no more stoicism needed. A course-record tying 63 the day before at Leopard Creek Country Club in Malelane, South Africa, had the 384th golfer in the World Ranking in a share of the 54-hole lead. Making the turn in one over after a double bogey on the ninth hole, Strydom bounced back with four birdies over a five-hole stretch on the back nine, pulling away from the field with a three-shot lead. A final-round 69 left him at 18-under 270 overall, two shots clear of runner-up, LIV Golf’s Adrian Otaegui.

Interestingly, Strydom’s emotions were kept in check in his post-round interview. “It’s nice. I am sure my wife and parents are at home crying,” he said, soaked with champagne rather than tears. He lone sign of nerves came from long drags on his vape walking up the 18th hole.

A moment to remember for Ockie Strydom ?

His first win on the DP World Tour!#DunhillChamps pic.twitter.com/AufBvfPDDi

— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) December 11, 2022

The win earned Strydom €255,000 (his biggest previous DP World Tour pay day was €53,200) as well as full membership on the DP World Tour. “I think my plans just changed a little bit,” he joked, noting the need now to start looking for flights to the UAE, there the tour plays a handful of events in January to restart the 2022-23 season.

Strydom had played in 38 previous DP World Tour events, making the cut just 19 times. He had two top-10 finishes, including a T-3 showing at the South Africa Open in 2011, two years after turning pro.

“I’m just happy,” he said, noting that the victory came in a part of South Africa, near his home in Kempton Park, where he’s comfortable.

“It’s the bush. I’m calm in the bush. My first win was in the bush and now we’re back in the bush.”

It was a rare week of OWGR points for some LIV Golf players as Laurie Canter, Louis Oosthuizen and Branden Grace joining Otaegui in the top 10 in South Africa.

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Louis Oosthuizen isn’t done worrying if he’ll stay in the OWGR top 50 at year’s end after 72nd hole bogey

Golf Digest Middle East — Sun, 11 Dec 2022 18:04:37 +0000

By Ryan Herrington
Louis Oosthuizen has a little more waiting to do before he’ll know for certain if he ends the year in the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking — and likely secure a spot in the field at the Masters next April. And he has a bogey on the final hole of the Alfred Dunhill Championship in South Africa to thank/blame for it.

The 40-year-old South African is among several players who joined LIV Golf this summer and have subsequently slid down the OWGR since LIV events don’t offer ranking points. Oosthuizen was 21st at the start of June but has fallen to 50th this week.

Desperate to secure his top 50 status on the final OWGR list of 2022, a milestone that Augusta National traditionally has used to invite players to compete in the Masters, Oosthuizen signed up to play in the Dunhill, co-sanctioned by the DP World Tour and Sunshine Tour and offering OWGR points. And he was having a great final round on Sunday at Leopard Creek Country Club, shooting five-under through the first 17 holes to move into fourth place after starting the day in a tie for 10th. But on the par-5 18th at Leopard Creek Country Club, a hole with an island green, Oosthuizen hit his approach into the water. After missing a 15-footer for par, the bogey 6 (his third on the hole for the week) slid him from a T-4 position to T-7.

That was an incredible battle, not sure they were really aware of it. So…@kevinna915 seems to be guaranteed a top 50 finish at the end of the year@Louis57TM will get the last spot if Burmy doesn't win @AfrAsiaMRUOpen.@BurmyGolf will get the last spot if he wins it! #OWGR pic.twitter.com/c0UcpqWosI

— Nosferatu (@VC606) December 11, 2022

Based on preliminary calculations from the OWGR, Oosthuizen is projected to finish 50th in the final ranking (he’ll be 48th in the ranking that comes out on Monday), but with a caveat. Fellow South African Dean Burmester, who also finished T-7 at the Dunhill after a bogey-birdie finish, is currently projected to finish 53rd in the OWGR. Burmester, however, is playing in next week’s AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open, another co-sanctioned DP World Tour/Sunshine event. If he wins the event, he could jump Oosthuizen and knock his countryman to 51st.

Potentially, Oosthuizen might try to get into the Mauritius event at the last minute, just to shore up his position. Interestingly, if he were to do that, he could potentially put another LIV golfer clinging to top 50 status in jeopardy of falling out. Kevin Na is projected to be 49th in the final OWGR list. If Burmester and Oosthuizen played well at Mauritius, they could both jump Na and drop him to 51st.

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European Tour pro with harrowing backstory pulls out impressive win in home country

Golf Digest Middle East — Sun, 29 Nov 2020 20:29:56 +0000

Richard Heathcote
Christiaan Bezuidenhout celebrates on the 18th green after rallying to win the Alfred Dunhill Championship in South Africa.

By John Huggan
Often enough, the winning of golf tournaments at the professional level is more about the elimination of serious error than the making of plentiful birdies and eagles. An eventful Alfred Dunhill Championship at Leopard Creek turned out to be one of those times. While those around him floundered amidst a flurry of bogeys, doubles and triples over the closing nine holes, the only member of the top-five finishers making steady progress was eventual champion Christiaan Bezuidenhout. The combination of some evil pin positions and an ever-freshening breeze proved to be too much test for the rest.

Bezuidenhout’s bogey-free back-nine 34, three under par over the picturesque lay-out that sits across the Crocodile River from the stunning array of African animals populating the Kruger National Park, was at least three shots better than anyone else in that top five. And that steadiness under pressure proved to be the key to the 26-year-old South African’s second European Tour victory. His beautifully constructed closing 69 took him to 14-under-par 274 for the week, four shots better than the four runners-up, Jayden Schaper, Adrian Meronk, Richard Bland and Sean Crocker.

“This is incredible,” said Bezuidenhout, who suffers from a stutter resulting from his ingestion of rat poison as a 2-year-old. “This tournament has been close to my heart ever since I played here for the first time. It is one I have always wanted to win. So to pull it off is very special to me, especially on a such a difficult day. That was a two-and-a-half club wind out there. It swirled a lot and led to my double bogey on the seventh. I actually hit a decent shot, but it just drifted way right on the breeze. But I’m proud of myself. It was all about sticking in there today.”

Still, making his Masters debut two weeks earlier, where he finished T-38, also turned out to have some lasting benefits.

“I had a plan this week,” Bezuidenhout revealed. “I played a practice round with Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel at Augusta National. They told me to play the course as I would have done with the previous grass on it. I thought of it that way and played it as if it was firm and fast all week, which is how it was here today. I’m really pleased to have pulled it off.”

In contrast to the winner’s obvious excitement at triumphing in his homeland, there were obvious moments of regret for all of the second-place finishers.

Some examples:

• Standing on the 18th tee at 13 under par and one stroke back, Crocker badly pulled his tee shot on the 552-yard par 5, the ball rebounding out-of-bounds off the roof of a cart path. It all added up to a triple-bogey 8 for the Zimbabwe-born former USC All-American.

• Leading with nine holes to play, Schaper—widely viewed as the next star of South African golf—hit three balls off the 10th tee. Although he found the first one unplayable, the 19-year-old could do no better than a triple-bogey 7. Eight holes later, another drive flew OB off the 18th tee, the eventual bogey costing Schaper the chance to finish alone in second.

Warren Little
With his runner-up showing, Jayden Schaper, a 19-year-old South African, had the best finish of his nascent European Tour career.

• Long-time leader Adrian Meronk’s quest to become the first Pole to win on the European Tour came to an end with a 6-6 run (bogey, double bogey) on the 13th and 14th. That he found water again on the final hole cost him, like Schaper, second place on his own.

• Bland was the steadiest of the four runners-up, playing the back nine in level par. But the experienced Englishman, winless in 468 European Tour starts, wasn’t quite mistake-free. The 47-year-old’s lost ball off the 15th tee led to a scrambled bogey on the 580-yard par 5.

Such catastrophic events weren’t all down to the pressure that comes with contention either. Far down the leader board, Englishman Eddie Pepperell’s closing 81 contained a back-nine of 47 marked by a pair of triple bogeys, one double and two other dropped shots. At least for one day, the Crocodile River separated not only golf course from national park, but wildlife from wild shots.

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Polish player has shot at making history on European Tour

Golf Digest Middle East — Sat, 28 Nov 2020 23:32:00 +0000

Richard Heathcote
Adrian Meronk plays his second shot on the third hole during the third round of the Alfred Dunhill Championship.

By Tod Leonard
At 6-foot-6, Adrian Meronk is freakishly tall for a professional golfer, yet his stature in the game can grow even larger should he pull off a victory on Sunday in the European Tour’s Alfred Dunhill Championship in South Africa.

After posting a one-under-par 71 at Leopard Creek Country Club in Malelane on Saturday, Meronk is 18 holes away from history. Heading into the final round with a one-stroke lead over South African teenager Jayden Schaper, the 27-year-old can become the first Polish player to win on the European Tour.

A victory would continue a steady, impressive rise for Meronk, who had five wins in his college career at East Tennessee State. His performance this week is a bit against his run of play, however, as he has only two top-10 finishes in his rookie season. He entered the week ranked 261st in the world, and his lone pro win came at last year’s Open de Portugal on the second-level Challenge Tour.

Meronk was born in Hamburg, Germany, to Polish parents, and the family moved to Poland when he was 2. As chronicled by Golf Digest’s John Huggan in October, Meronk’s dad was an avid golfer in a country where few took up the game until after Poland’s emergence from Soviet control. European and PGA tour events weren’t available on television to the Polish public until two years ago, and even today, there are only about 6,000 golfers in a country of more than 37 million.

“I’ve had a lot of feedback from people at home who have been watching,” Meronk told Golf Digest. “There has been a lot of growth in playing numbers this year in Poland. Because of the virus, people have been looking for things to do outdoors. And golf has benefitted. New courses are being built. I try my best to make a difference. If I was to win on the European Tour, it would be huge for golf in Poland. So would making it to the Olympics. I’m in right now through my World Ranking. If I was to do well in that, golf would get a lot of publicity.”

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Pablo Larrazabal takes cue from Tiger, fends off painful blister to win the Alfred Dunhill Championship

Golf Digest Middle East — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 18:19:53 +0000

Pablo Larrazabal of Spain, fighting a blister on his right foot, is shown here on the 10th hole in the final round of the Alfred Dunhill Championship that he won by one. (Photo by Jan Kruger/Getty Images)

By John Strege
The Alfred Dunhill Championship was Pablo Larrazabal’s to lose on Sunday, and, hobbled by a painful blister, was in the process of doing so when he took a cue from Tiger Woods and limped to his first victory in more than four years.

The 36-year-old Spaniard had a three-stroke lead through 54 holes at Leopard Creek Country Club in Malelane, South Africa, when “a big blister on my right toe,” he said, threatened to derail him in the final round.

He went out in six-over 41, then clawed his way back into contention and birdied three of the final four holes for his fifth European Tour victory.

“I woke up this morning and I didn’t think I was going to play,” he said. “I couldn’t put my shoe on. I couldn’t walk to the buggy. I couldn’t go to the putting green. I really struggled today. The front nine I couldn’t walk. I said to myself, you cannot walk, you cannot swing. I couldn’t follow through. I said to myself, if Tiger can win a U.S. Open with a broken leg [ in 2008], what’s a blister?

“I said to myself, you play the worst golf of your career and you’re just two behind. Keep struggling, put some heart on. I put some heart on the back nine.”

Larrazabal rejoined the mix by holing a 20-foot birdie putt at 16 to tie Wil Besseling and Joel Sjoholm for the lead. Sjoholm, playing ahead of Larrazabal, parred the par-5 18th hole to finish at seven-under-par 281.

Besseling, attempting to reach the 18th green in two from the rough, landed his ball on the green, but it rolled over and settled on the rock wall behind the green, just short of the water. From an exceedingly difficult lie, using a putter, he got the ball back on grass, then was unable to get up and down for par.

Larrazabal, meanwhile, laid up with his second, then hit a brilliant third to three feet of the hole. He holed the birdie putt to conclude an improbable back nine of three-under 34 for a three-over 75 to win the European Tour’s 2020 season opener by a stroke.

“Unbelievable, the way I won it,” he said. “It’s been a long road. I’ve really struggled the last few years. I’ve been working so hard.”

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Tyrrell Hatton wins Turkish Airlines Open in six-man playoff that finished under floodlights

Golf Digest Middle East — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 05:48:12 +0000

Tyrrell Hatton hangs on to win a six-man playoff under the lights at the 2019 Turkish Airlines Open. (Warren Little/Getty Images)

By John Huggan
For the first time on the European Tour since the 2003 Alfred Dunhill Championship, there were six starters in a sudden-death—and ultimately floodlit—playoff for the Turkish Airlines Open title and the $2 million first-place check.

Erik Van Rooyen, Kurt Kitayama, Tyrrell Hatton, Matthias Schwab, Victor Perez and Benjamin Hebert all shot 20-under-par 268s for 72 holes over the largely defenceless (little or no wind, soft greens) 7,133-yard Montgomerie Maxx Royal course. Thankfully, given the looming sunset, it took only one trip up the 558-yard par-5 18th to cut the playoff field in half. Van Rooyen, Perez and Hebert all bowed out after failing to make the required birdies.

After playing the 18th a second time in extra holes, there still remained three. Hatton failed to follow up his unlikely chip-in on the first playoff hole and settled for par. Schwab’s clumsy pitch from behind the putting surface meant he did likewise. And Kitayama missed from six feet for what would have been his third victory in his first season on the European Tour, an unprecedented feat.

A third time round, Hatton and Schwab turned wayward drives (all three missed the increasingly elusive fairway) into birdies. Exit Kitayama, who remains engaged in a spirited and high-quality struggle with Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre for rookie-of-the-year honours.

Perhaps not surprisingly given the stress each man must have been feeling amid the unfamiliar lighting, the eventual conclusion on the fourth playoff hole was laced with errors. While the ever-expressive Hatton was still remonstrating with himself after missing from roughly eight feet for a winning birdie, Schwab stepped up and missed from half that range. It was over par for Hatton versus bogey from Schwab.

Hatton celebrates after chipping in on the 18th hole during the first sudden-death playoff hole. (Jan Kruger)

“This surreal, I actually can’t believe I’ve won,” said Hatton, who shot a closing 67 to get in the playoff. “It’s been quite a difficult year off the course, but the last month I feel like I’ve really found my game again. I’ve been saying to a few people on my team that if I was lucky enough to win again, I would definitely savour the moment. Golf is great when it is going well, but when it isn’t, it kind of hits home. So I’m thrilled. I’m just so happy.”

Indeed, for the champion, who had fallen 25 places to 48th in the World Rankings since the start of 2019, there was irony in this, his fourth career European Tour victory. At the end of this month, the Englishman will undergo surgery on the wrist injury that has bothered him since the 2017 Masters.

“I know it’s not normal to feel excited about an operation, but it’s such a relief to get to the bottom of what has been a very worrying problem,” Hatton said. “I’ve had three steroid injections that basically lasted six months each time, but that couldn’t go on and so since July I’ve been seeing the tour doctors just to see what I can take to get me through each round.”

In truth, Schwab surely left the premises with the most regrets. After sharing the lead on Day 1, the 25-year-old Salzburg-native held it outright until the 72nd hole, when he missed a 20-foot birdie try that could have avoided the playoff entirely, setting for a final-round 70 after taking a three-shot lead into the final 18. Schwab also was the only man in the playoff who did not make at least a birdie on that closing par 5.

“I’m not feeling too great, obviously,” was his immediate reaction to what was clearly a painful defeat. “But it was a close call. I had some good looks and good chances coming down the stretch in regular play. I just didn’t take advantage of them. A second-place finish is not too bad though. Even if, at the moment, it doesn’t feel too good.”

Schwab held the lead throughout the final round as he was trying to win his first European Tour title. (Warren Little/Getty Images)

Schwab should not feel too bad. Like his compatriot Bernd Wiesberger, he is a man on the rise, a fact that will not have escaped the notice of European Ryder Cup captain Padraig Harrington. This was just the latest in a string of high-finishes from the 2017 Vanderbilt graduate. Not only was this second-place tie Schwab’s sixth top-10 finish in his last nine events, he has 10 in all, more than anyone else on this season’s European Tour. En route, he has broken par in 31 of his last 35 competitive rounds. Given that sort of sustained form, a maiden win cannot be far off.

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