Haydn hoping rain goes away

South African Haydn Porteous, 22, will be defending his Joburg Open title this week at Royal Johannesburg and Kensington Golf Club with a remodelled swing, but his chief concern might be getting out on the course at all given the rain that has fallen, and is still forecast, over Gauteng.

Tournament director David Williams described himself as being “reasonably optimistic” that the 72-hole co-sanctioned event would be able to tee off tomorrow without major problems.

“It’s fortunate we don’t have a Wednesday start because there’s more rain due tonight, but the heavy stuff should stop around 7am on Wednesday (today). We’ve had more than 80mm over the last 15 hours, so even 10-15mm could be a problem if it comes on top of 150mm.

“But the course drains reasonably well and all we need is a decent lull which will allow a lot of water to disperse and the groundstaff can then start work on the bunkers. If we then had a reasonable Wednesday night and Thursday morning, then hopefully there will be no problem. I’m reasonably optimistic because on each day there is meant to be less rain,” Williams said yesterday.

Porteous claimed a stirring two-stroke victory in last year’s Joburg Open, the week after Brandon Stone’s memorable SA Open triumph at Glendower, and it seemed like a new wave of South African stars was heading to dominate Europe with Zander Lombard finishing second at Royal and Christiaan Bezuidenhout the runner-up in the national open.

But it’s fair to say Porteous did not really do himself justice in the rest of 2016. Apart from winning the Sunshine Tour’s Investec Cup tournament last March, he only managed to finish 85th on the European Tour order of merit, due in the main to swing changes.