Eight amateurs will peg the ball up on day one of the 110th South African Open Championship at the Gary Player Country Club in Sun City this week.
The championship, which gets underway today (December 3), will conclude on December 6.
For most South African amateurs, competing in the SA Open alongside top professionals from across the world, the SA Open is the Holy Grail; the pinnacle of their careers.
Leading the challenge is Casey Jarvis from State Mines, who already etched his name in the South African golfing record books this year.
Successive victories in the Free State and Gauteng North Opens early in the year cemented his billing as one of the country’s leading young stars and in February the world number 78 broke a 51-year-old record held by Dale Hayes to become the youngest winner of the South African Stroke Play Championship. At the age of 16 years, six months and 17 days Jarvis claimed a nine-stroke victory on 25-under 263, having fired rounds of 66, 65, 67 and 65 at Randpark Golf Club.
A week later, the Boksburg teenager sealed his spot in the SA Open with a comfortable 7&6 victory over Scotland’s James Wilson in the Aon SA Amateur Championship at Royal Johannesburg and Kensington and became only the seventh amateur to achieve the rare double since the SA Stroke Play separated from the SA Amateur in 1969.
Jarvis, unfortunately, fell short during the recently held Alfred Dunhill Championship at Leopard Creek.
Furthermore, this year the exciting line-up also includes four past champions: world number 70 Dylan Frittelli and world number 40 Christiaan Bezuidenhout – the winner of last week’s Alfred Dunhill Championship – and a bevy of top European and Sunshine Tour challengers on this piece of prime South African real estate is an intoxicating cocktail.
And while the amateurs will not be eligible for any part of the R19-million on offer to those who make the 36-hole cut, there is more than just pride on the line in teeing it up in the world’s second oldest national championship.
The historic Freddie Tait Cup beckons for the highest-placed amateur who survives the cut and, after a disrupted golf season due to lockdown, these eight young men need no further encouragement to step up to claim their place in SA Open folklore.
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