Another stellar Sunshine Tour season will end on a high this week with the exclusive R2-million Tour Championship delivered by The Courier Guy at Serengeti Estates featuring the stars of the 2023-24 season. MICHAEL VLISMAS reports.
The top 50 available professionals on the Sunshine Tour Order of Merit delivered by The Courier Guy have qualified for this 72-hole tournament with no halfway cut, which tees off on Thursday.
The event is just reward for the professionals’ consistency throughout one of the most successful Sunshine Tour seasons in history with a number of new young stars emerging and the overall increase in events and prize money on the Tour.
Ryan van Velzen leads the field as the No 1-ranked player on the Sunshine Tour Order of Merit following a breakthrough season in which he won three times and where he is now seeking to secure the overall Order of Merit title which would put him in an exclusive group in South African golf from Gary Player to Ernie Els to more recently Christiaan Bezuidenhout.
A further incentive is that the top three professionals at the end of the season will receive an added bonus, with R500,000 going to the first-placed finisher followed by R200,000 for second and R100,000 for third place. This will be on top of their season’s earnings.
In second place behind Van Velzen, Robin Williams is challenging for his own honours this week as he seeks to claim the Fortress Rookie of the Year Award and with it a R200,000 bonus. Williams announced himself as a new star in the South African game this season as he claimed a maiden Sunshine Tour title in his rookie season and lost a playoff for a DP World Tour co-sanctioned title in the SDC Championship as well as finishing third in a European Challenge Tour co-sanctioned event in the Dimension Data Pro-Am.
The field this week also includes defending champion Jaco Ahlers as well as rising young star Casey Jarvis, who finished second last year, Nikhil Rama, who came close to winning the Joburg Open before finishing sixth, and 2018 champion Darren Fichardt.
Photo: Tyrone Winfield/Sunshine Tour
