The difficulty I have with the SA Open, which this week heads to the iconic Sun City, is in imagining most of the field lifting this historic trophy. In the main it has proven beyond the reach of Sunshine Tour players who, because of a markedly weaker field, now have to be taken seriously. The European Tour players who are here have generally endured disappointing seasons: only Brandon Stone, Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Pablo Larrazabal have already qualified for the Race to Dubai final. At a fearsome golf course, which usually hosts the world-class Nedbank Challenge, everything seems a little out of sync.
Stone and Bezuidenhout take up two of the top three positions in the market, with Masters fifth Dylan Frittelli joining them, and all three are part of the small group who are capable of winning even a strong renewal of the tournament. Stone has already done so, Bezuidenhout has been second, and longer-than-he-was Frittelli is better than he was when playing some nice golf for 21st here a couple of years ago. The trouble is, two are at single-figure prices and Stone, who is playing really well, has finished 60th of 71, 66th of 70, and 69th of 70, in his three starts at Sun City.
Wilco Nienaber, Garrick Higgo and Jayden Trey Schaper all have obvious claims and could be ready to win this despite their tender years. For Schaper, the challenge will be to bounce back from a disappointing finish to the Alfred Dunhill Championship, while Nienaber will have to avoid the ruinous errors his swing speed can bring. Higgo, who won his first professional title here in 2019 and is already a European Tour champion, has been disappointing for a fortnight. Still, he's gone from half Schaper's price to a touch bigger with most and if his long-game is back on-song, he might be the one.
Those are the key home challengers, and it will be fascinating to see how each of them copes under the pressure of playing for this title - particularly now the nines have been switched, which means the final hole will be the ninth, one of the most dramatic risk-reward par-fives in golf. There is absolutely no doubt that even some of the most decorated South African players have found the pressure of playing for their national championship a little too much, most notably Charl Schwartzel. His friend Louis Oosthuizen did finally win the event in 2018 and wept more than Bubba Watson did when denying him a green jacket. It means a heck of a lot to the locals.
For JOOST LUITEN, there's a different kind of motivation for all that I'm sure he'd be delighted to have his name etched onto this trophy, perhaps more so than most as a Dutchman.
Anyway, Luiten is 78th in the Race to Dubai entering this and needs a huge week if he's to make the DP World Tour Championship. As I alluded to a fortnight ago at Randpark, where a desperate first round saw him miss the cut, Luiten has played the season finale every year since 2010 and it's a massive goal of his, as he confirmed a couple of days ago.
"I was planning to play the Golf in Dubai Championship next week, but I decided to stay in South Africa for the South African Open," he wrote. "The tournament in Dubai starts on Wednesday and I cannot arrive in Dubai until Tuesday at the earliest.
"The South African Open is played at the Gary Player Country Club, a course that I know well from the Nedbank Challenge and which I also like. That's why I now choose that tournament. Hopefully I will play a week later than in Dubai, because my goal is of course to force participation in the DP World Tour Championship at Jumeirah Estates."
Luiten's decision could pay off, because he's got a strong and improving record here. It took him a while to figure things out - perhaps his natural tendency to fire at every flag needed curbing given cloverleaf-shaped greens which help to hide them - but he looks to have done so, finishing 14th, 12th, 27th and 10th since the field was expanded to 70. That's rock-solid form in elite company and he faces nothing like it here.
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