Bekker aims to end in style

The prestige of winning a season-ending Tour Championship on the Sunshine Tour will be the motivating factor for the likes of Oliver Bekker (above) when the tournament gets underway at Serengeti Estates on Thursday.

Bekker finds himself in fifth position on the Sunshine Tour Order of Merit ahead of the final event of the 2017/18 term, and unable to overhaul leader George Coetzee. That’s despite the fact that three victories before the end of August had Bekker atop the standings for much of the year.

A pair of top-10s – in the Mauritius Open and the Cape Town Open – were not enough to counteract a missed cut in the SA Open, and middling to poor finishes in the Eye of Africa PGA Championship, the Dimension Data Pro-Am and a missed cut in the Tshwane Open.

There are a couple of other players who will feel a little like Bekker does. JC Ritchie and Okkie Strydom have had the seasons of their careers. And while they might not feel as if they have had the Order of Merit snatched from them, victory for either would be the icing on the cake.

Ritchie had a wretched start to his year – but it only lasted five holes of the 2018 Zimbabwe Open. He made a quintuple-bogey nine on the opening hole, and bogey again on the fifth. But he picked up the pace dramatically, closing with a flawless 64 to win his maiden Sunshine Tour title.

He’s followed that up with a pair of superb third-place finishes, one in the SA Open and the other in the Cape Town Open. He also finished 13th in the Dimension Data Pro-Am and the Tshwane Open.