Hitting greens the best formula
Advertising itself as a “difficult and demanding” course, the Gary Player Country Club at Sun City will certainly test the elite of the European Tour when the Nedbank Golf Challenge gets underway tomorrow, and it is the competitors who can hit the most greens in regulation who are likely to prosper.
The Gary Player Country Club is known for being a ball-striker’s course, most exemplified by the superb records of Lee Westwood and Henrik Stenson in the Nedbank Golf Challenge. Three of the last four winners of the event led the field in greens hit en-route to victory.
“The wind can be quite strong at times and the greens are quite small and they like to hide the pins out on the edges. So when you try to be too aggressive, it can bite you in the back. You have to play pretty good to shoot low, you can make birdies out there,” defending champion Alex Noren acknowledged yesterday.
Noren is currently eighth on the Race to Dubai rankings and is one of the favourites for the penultimate event of the season, along with the man in ninth position on the Order of Merit, Italian Francesco Molinari.
Tommy Fleetwood is the leader of the Race to Dubai and, despite Justin Rose’s dramatic wins over the last fortnight to climb into second just behind his countryman, Fleetwood is not sweating too much despite the Pilanesberg heat.
Fleetwood topped the greens-in-regulation stat at last week’s Turkish Airlines Open, which has to be a good omen, and Rose is sitting out the Sun City tournament.