63 glee for SA’s Davidse

The road to the top of the Joburg Open leaderboard has not been an easy or straightforward one for 28-year-old De Zalze golfer Keenan Davidse (below), but there he was at the end of the first round at Randpark Golf Club yesterday, heading a field of 239 other top golfers from Europe, South Africa and Asia.

Davidse fired an amazing eight-under-par 63 on Randpark’s Bushwillow course to claim a onestroke lead over Englishmen Matthew Baldwin and James Morrison, South Africans Jared Harvey, Erik van Rooyen and Ockie Strydom, and Germany’s Sebastian Heisele.

Coming from a disadvantaged community in Stellenbosch, Davidse was picked up by the Ernie Els & Fancourt Foundation and then the South African Golf Development Board, which supported him last year during his tenure with the Sunshine Tour’s development squad, the Gary Player Class of 2017.

Strangely for a Western Cape golfer, his two best performances have now come at the Joburg Open, where he finished tied-seventh in February and is now on track for another big payday.

But even with that solid form, Davidse’s build-up was not easy as he had to overcome a bout of gastric flu.

“When I played the Sunshine Tour event at Simola, my little boy was sick with a bad chest, and then my wife had flu and then I got the flu and lost a lot of weight.

“I checked myself into hospital for four days but I couldn’t deal with that and the heat in Mauritius and I didn’t play too well. So I didn’t really have any expectations coming into this week,” said Davidse who dropped just one shot on the par-three sixth.

All the golfers on eight and seven-under will have to tackle the tougher Firethorn course today, where South Africans Oliver Bekker and Dean Burmester, Mikko Korhonen and Oliver Lindell of Finland, Denmark’s Joachim Hansen and Englishman Richard McEvoy all shot six-under-par 66s yesterday.