Fresh off a solid week at the US Open, Louis Oosthuizen will line up alongside Dylan Frittelli as the only South Africans in the field at the Travelers Championship.
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The field is full of stars including defending champion Bubba Watson as the circuit switches coasts back from Pebble Beach for its 36th visit to TPC River Highlands.
Brooks Koepka will again strike an imposing figure after narrowly missing out on a historic third consecutive US Open title. With career-slam glory on hold for another year, Phil Mickelson will tee off on Thursday to end a 15-year absence from a place where he became the tournament’s only back-to-back winner in 2001 and ’02.
Jordan Spieth, Paul Casey, Marc Leishman and Tony Finau are also in action but, expectedly, attention will be on Oosthuizen.
A final round 76 at Augusta had him miss out on a top-10 finish. In another final-round struggle at the PGA Championship (79) he recorded a T60 finish when a 70 would’ve banked another top 10.
Those two results set the South African up for a run at the US Open and he obliged with his name inside the top 5 all week until a double on the 10th hole on Sunday ended his pursuit of a second Major win. He eventually settled for a T7 result but will start this week buoyed by his recent showings which included good performances in all key scoring areas.
Crucially, he remains fit to start and the head of steam may just help nudge him closer to his first win on US soil.
Frittelli joins Oosthuizen as a South African to watch and with six cuts made in his last seven outings, there is room for optimism.
A T24 at the Wells Fargo Championship stands out as his best result over the short term but with focus on keeping his card rather than a breakthrough win, the steady 29-year-old could stick round long enough to threaten the first pages of the leaderboard.
