Plenty to play for as winter golf approaches
He'll be accompanied by his good friend Mikhail van Brakel who will be on the bag.
There’s a lot of exciting golf ahead for some of the region’s top golfers, once the rain stops and the courses dry out.
Jason Gilliver of Umdoni Park is arguably the area’s number one player, although Gavin Sole (Southbroom) continues to defy time, and emerging talent Jack Cubitt (Umdoni Park) has shown major improvement.
Whatever the case, Jason will be heading off to Round 2 of the Sunshine Tour Q School at Heron Banks GC in Sasolburg in the next week or so.
He’ll be accompanied by his good friend Mikhail van Brakel who will be on the bag.
And it looks all but confirmed that Jack will be going to the US to take up a college scholarship in August.
In other tournament news, Port Shepstone Country Club has been named as the host for the KwaZulu-Natal Open Strokeplay tournament, which will be played from May 20 to 22 over 72 holes.
At the time of writing, the course was soaked due to the persistent rain, but by the time May 20 rolls around, it should be in superb winter condition.
Club chairman Ryan Ringo is looking forward to seeing many of the country’s top amateurs attempt to see how much under par they can go.
He’s also hoping the new green on the 3rd hole will be open for play.
Two weeks after this the Southern KZN premier league team will host Mount Edgecombe Country Club – on June 5 – in the last of the pool games.
Should Southern KZN win, or even halve, they will top their pool and qualify for a home semi-final against the second placed team from the other pool in the league.
This match will then be held at Port Shepstone CC on July 10 – and if they can win this, then they will qualify for the final, at a neutral venue.
It would be quite something for the local team, as they only regained their place in the premier league this year, and only just.
Still, they have a solid team and fairly comfortably won the recent KZN Country Districts Interzone tournament at Eshowe Hills in Zululand, even without Jason and one or two other regulars.
Before the Open and the league games, four members of the team will represent KZN at the South African Country Districts tournament at Sishen Golf Club in the Northern Cape.
These players are Jean-Marc Bouic (Southbroom), who will captain, plus Graham Fabricius, Matt Sutherland and Jack Cubitt, all from Umdoni Park GC.
Graham has come seemingly from nowhere, returning to the game, finding form and now a place in the provincial side.
Matt and Jack both have weddings to attend – not their own, not yet anyway! – and will fly to Johannesburg and then drive through on the Sunday.
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