Hennie Otto took eight full years to pick up his 13th Sunshine Tour win as he came out on top after a thrilling finale at the Sibaya Challenge.
Otto won by a single stroke as he raced through the field at The Woods at Mount Edgecombe.
He started the day six strokes off the lead, but a closing eight-under-par 62 with not a single bogey on the card had him edge James Hart du Preez by a single stroke, with Daniel van Tonder, Anthony Michael and Malcolm Mitchell a further stroke back. That was his first win in South Africa since the 2011 South African Open Championship in November that year.
‘It is just my second full season back after surgery,’ he said. ‘It’s a long road. It takes longer than you think. It has been coming. I’ve been playing really nicely. The scoring didn’t show that the last couple of weeks. If I can break 30 putts average for a round then I can be up there and today showed it – 26 putts with a chip-in.’
He had plenty of work to do, and it needed the kind of brilliance that a hot putter can bring to any golfer to get him into contention. ‘I said this morning if I could shoot eight under, I’d have a chance,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t think the guys were going to fall back that much. I thought they’d make at least four under, and eight under would have got me close to a playoff. But I got it going and when I got to the par three on 12, I saw the scores and I thought I had a chance. I let it slip on 13 and 14 and I thought I’d blown it, but then I birdied 15 and 18 and that made a difference.’
Du Preez made a second consecutive run at his maiden win after his third-place finish at Selborne last week. His runner-up spot this week came courtesy of his closing three-under 67 – and, in fact, owed a lot to his three consecutive birdies to close out the round after he’d turned in two over.
In third, Van Tonder got a hole-in-one on the 12th, and carded a seven-under 63 for the second-best round of the day after Otto. Michael signed for a 65 and Mitchell a 67 for their share of third.
For Otto, it’s a shot in the arm for his desire to get back on to the international stage, where his last win came in the Open d’Italia on the European Tour in 2014.
‘Confidence-wise, this is a boost,’ he said. ‘I’m not a guy that rides on it much, but I knew it was going to come. Patience is not my thing, so this is a boost. I’m not going to the European Tour Q-School, but I’ll go to the Asian Tour Q-School. I just missed out on Japan. There are a lot of things to sort out, but it’s time to go overseas.
‘The big events are coming here in South Africa and you never know what’s going to happen. I don’t have expectations that are too high, but I’m just going to try and keep on doing what I did now over the last couple of months and then see what happens in the summer.’
Scores:
197 – Hennie Otto 69 66 62
198 – James Hart du Preez 68 63 67
199 – Daniel van Tonder 68 68 63, Anthony Michael 64 70 65, Malcolm Mitchell 64 68 67
200 – Steve Surry 68 66 66, Oliver Bekker 67 67 66, Neil Schietekat 68 62 70
201 – Luke Mayo 68 68 65, Kyle Barker 71 65 65, Chris Cannon 68 67 66, Dylan Naidoo 66 69 66
202 – Jake Redman 68 69 65, Martin Rohwer 67 69 66, Christiaan Basson 69 66 67, Titch Moore 64 71 67, Jacques P de Villiers 69 64 69, Andre Nel 68 65 69
203 – Ryan Cairns 71 67 65, JC Ritchie 69 68 66, Andrew van der Knaap 67 70 66, Toto Thimba 68 68 67
204 – Heinrich Bruiners 71 67 66, Clinton Grobler 69 69 66, Jaco Prinsloo 73 64 67, Mark Williams 70 66 68
205 – Hennie du Plessis 70 68 67, Anton Haig 67 70 68, Andrew Curlewis 68 69 68, Teboho Sefatsa 69 67 69, Ruan de Smidt 68 65 72, Jonathan Agren 67 66 72, Fredrik From 70 63 72, Ruan Conradie 67 62 76
206 – Derick Petersen 74 64 68, Daniel Greene 70 68 68, Stephen Ferreira 71 67 68, Keith Horne 70 68 68, Keelan van Wyk 69 68 69, Jared Harvey 70 67 69, Lyle Rowe 69 68 69
207 – Doug McGuigan 71 67 69, Philip Eriksson 70 68 69, Darin de Smidt 73 65 69, Madalitso Muthiya 68 69 70, Pieter Moolman 70 66 71
208 – Jean Hugo 69 69 70, Estiaan Conradie 69 69 70, Ockie Strydom 70 67 71, Trevor Fisher Jnr 68 69 71, Altaaf Bux 68 67 73
209 – CJ du Plessis 68 70 71
210 – Jacques Blaauw 71 67 72
211 – Colin Nel 69 69 73, Paul Boshoff 68 68 75
213 – Erhard Lambrechts 73 65 75
