A fortnight or so ago, flooding forced the abandonment of a Sunshine Tour event before a ball had been struck. Last week, organisers somehow got the South African Open under way but Sunday's final round became a play-off instead. Then, on Monday, the first practice round ahead of the Joburg Open was suspended due to yet more rain.
With 'thundery showers' expected on Tuesday and Wednesday followed by drizzle from then on, the one thing we can be sure of this week is that Houghton GC will be soft. Less certain is just how much golf will be possible, though it must be said conditions at the time of writing are far less severe than they were hours before the SA Open began.
Hopefully we'll get the full complement for what is probably the weakest event of the season on the DP World Tour, owing to the fact that the big-name South Africans are contracted to play elsewhere and that, thanks to his runner-up finish last week, Laurie Canter now has The PLAYERS Championship to prepare for instead.
Without him, two of the best remaining European players have injury issues to overcome, both Jordan Smith and Ewen Ferguson having withdrawn from their last intended starts. The standout international player, Johannes Veerman, has missed his last three cuts, and suddenly after Dylan Naidoo's win this begins to look like another excellent opportunity for someone on the Sunshine Tour to take the next step up.
Hailing from nearby Benoni, this is a genuine home game for the former Junior Players champion, who first earned Sunshine Tour status by coming through Qualifying School here at Houghton.
Since turning pro he's been 18th and ninth in this event, closing with a round of 65 on his first try and then always close to the lead on his second. That was almost 18 months ago now and in the interim he's certainly improved, reaching a career-high DataGolf ranking and close to surpassing it again at the moment.
Form figures of 5-4-16 speak for themselves and he knows Houghton better than he knows Durban, where like many he just struggled a tad in Saturday's difficult conditions and was denied the chance to put things right on Sunday.
Still, he's now ended each of his last 11 rounds inside the top 20 and, with seven top-20s from his last 10 starts in these co-sanctioned events back home, plus another couple in Kenya, he's been banging loudly on the door whenever faced with familiar conditions.
Whereas he eventually gave way to the likes of Burmester and Louis Oosthuizen in similar tournaments at the back-end of 2023, including this one, this will be the first time he's the form pick and the relative drop in grade, combined with an upturn in fortunes of late, make his chances difficult to escape.
Schaper is a solid driver, accurate but not short, he's excellent around the greens, and he's a far better putter than he showed in the SA Open. This is just a fantastic opportunity and I'm happy taking prices down to 16/1.
While hand on heart he's the sort of price I was expecting, CASEY JARVIS is a fair bit bigger thanks to a narrow missed cut in Durban.
Jarvis bogeyed his final hole in a second-round 69 but while he'd played Durban as a 14-year-old, he's another who hails from the outskirts of Johannesburg and knows Houghton far better.
Ninth here in 2022 came just a few months into his professional career and he sat second at halfway following a second-round 63, before another strong start ended in a mid-pack 37th on his return.
That was his first appearance after a largely poor end to his Challenge Tour campaign, one which featured a win at the tight Adamstal, and he returns now after a solid rookie DP World Tour season which included sixth in the Genesis Championship at a Nicklaus-designed course.
Jarvis had also been eighth at Crans and held the 54-hole lead at Taiheiyo Club in Japan, another tree-lined course with some aesthetic similarities to this one, and I won't be alone in expecting him to at least go very close to landing a breakthrough win at some stage this year.
There's nowhere better to do that than on his doorstep and with missed cuts part of the bargain with a young player like him, last week is a positive for my money. It tells us nothing really about his chances, but certainly helps hold up the price when something like 20th would've cost us a few points at the very least.
The fact that his ball-striking was so good, as it had been when he did in fact finish 20th in Kenya before that, is another plus and in a field like this it was a bit of a no-brainer to side with these two genuine potential stars of South African golf.
Jarvis in particular looks outstanding value at 40/1 and bigger and rates arguably the bet of the week.
Todd Clements was on the fringes here as a rookie two years ago and returns following an encouraging effort last week, but at the same sort of price I can't resist taking a chance on DYLAN FRITTELLI.
He's even more local than the two youngsters I've already selected and after some struggles in this event during the early part of his career, his last four starts read 16-42-12-12, all of them in considerably deeper fields.
The most striking of these is the one from 2023, here at Houghton, because not only does it give us course form but it also comes with additional context. Frittelli turned up here having missed 18 cuts in 19 starts on the PGA Tour, the exception when he scraped through to the weekend in Mississippi and finished a lowly 56th.
With conditions as they were, it doesn't feel like too big of a stretch to give anyone who struggled the benefit of the doubt and the price is key. Advised last week at 66/1, he'd have been about a 40/1 shot had the field been made up of these players instead so to be touching 100s feels like an overreaction.
Germishuys is another with Houghton experience from his amateur days, plus a good 21st in this event when he entered the final round inside the top 10, and though fading in the end he ranked eighth in strokes-gained approach.
That aspect of his game was in good shape in Kenya and if he can recapture that form in this similarly weak field, he's a definite candidate to make it three South African winners in succession.
Though not quite as highly regarded as Schaper and Jarvis, this youngster was a very good amateur in his own right and contended often on the Challenge Tour last year.
Compatriot Ryan van Velzen is another with a chance having been 11th at Muthaiga before a poor effort in Durban but I'll complete the staking plan by siding with KAZUMA KOBORI.
This young New Zealander has made a quietly impressive start to his rookie season, with five finishes between 15th and 34th including in Kenya (31st) and Durban (25th), and two missed cuts one of which was by a single shot after a bogey at the par-five closing hole.
Ranking 14th and ninth in strokes-gained off-the-tee across his last two starts, both at similarly fiddly courses, he's shown what his accuracy off the tee can do and had it not been for an atypically poor putting week in the SA Open, he might've bagged his first top 10 at this level having ranked first in fairways and third in greens.
Four wins on the Australian circuit marked him down as a potentially special talent and so did 12th place in the Dunhill Links before he got his card, so now he's built up some momentum, familiarised himself with African conditions and taken a relative drop in grade, I want to take a chance at big prices on a course which may suit.
He's preferred to another relative unknown, Zihao Jin, who took to Muthaiga and may take another step forward in what must be the weakest Joburg Open in memory.
Posted at 1800 GMT on 03/03/25
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