Case ‘Closed’ for golfer Graham Fabricius
Home course advantage definitely helped the new champion.
HOURS of practice and multiple rounds at Port Shepstone Country Club have finally paid off for Graham Fabricius.
The golfer won the Southern KwaZulu-Natal Closed at his home course on 70 points.
The format was Modified Stableford – eight points for an eagle, four for a birdie, two for a par, zero for a bogey, and minus one for double bogey or worse.
Graham had rounds of 31 points (gross 75) and 39 points (gross 71).
His afternoon round should have been a lot better but he flew the green on the 17th and it led to a double drop.
Graham was beaming afterwards. “Hopefully it will be the first of many. It comes from playing five rounds a week there. Nothing less would have been acceptable,” he laughed.
He didn’t have it all his own way, however, with Jarrod van Wyk and Warren van Heerden playing some superb golf in the morning round.
“I had a scruffy game in the morning and came in and saw Jarrod’s 38 points and thought ‘this is going to be tough’,” he said.
“So winning in the end came as something of a surprise, to be honest,” he added.
Jarrod had a morning round of 71, while Warren was level par. Both let a few errors creep into their games in the afternoon, thus falling off the pace, but not by much.
Ironically, his closest competition came from one of the players in his three-ball, namely Victor Mbhele.
Victor had only 25 points in the morning (gross 78) but fought back well in the afternoon with a stunning 44 points, thanks to a round of 68.
“We tried the Modified Stableford approach last year and it proved quite popular. The reason is that the Closed is used as an indicator towards league selection, and as league is matchplay, we felt that this format would produce more ‘matchplay’ type golf, ” said tournament organiser David Rush.
The course was soft after the recent rain and scoring was thus pretty good.
Defending champion Gavin Sole did not play, but it gave someone else a chance to get his name on the trophy!
Seasoned campaigner Gary Purtell won the ‘nett’ prize on 77 points, off his ‘bandit-esh’ handicap. Warren van Heerden was second on 76 points.
LEADING SCORES
1 Graham Fabricius 70 points (75 71)
2 Victor Mbhele 69 pts (78 68)
3 Jarrod van Wyk 67 pts (71 74)
3 Elvis Khawula 67 pts (74 73)
5 Horst Wortmann 66 pts (76 72)
6 Warren van Heerden 64 pts (72 76)
7 Gary Purtell 63 pts (75 74)
7 Patrick Mavundla 63 pts (75 74)
9 David Rush 62 pts (76 74)
10 Sean Baker 61 pts (74 76)
11 Francois Botha 59 pts (75 76)
12 Ronnie Mtshaka 58 pts (79 74)
13 Douglas Sima 56 pts (74 79)
13 Robert Mavundla 56 pts (77 76)
