Vickers launches a 419m drive in Grid Pro event
Favourites such as Marco das Neves, Juan Nel and Jason Cook fell out after losing their matches.
A cold and windy start greeted round four of the Grid Pro event held annually at the Grasslands Driving Range in Benoni.
The senior players kicked off the day with an 8am start, with Johan du Plessis and Anton Nel finding themselves in the finals after four gruelling sets to qualify.
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“Johan took the win over Anton and won the longest drive for the morning,” said Steven van Zyl, Gridpro owner.
According to Steven, the amateurs division was on fire, with some new and old faces getting through their five sets to not only qualify for the seniors but also win their division.
“It all came down to the finals with newcomer Neville de Lange in his first event hitting a drive over 370m. Andrew Mare had other plans following some advice from Gridpro. He teed it up and hit the longest drive in the amateurs division with 390m,” he said.
Andrew now leads the Order of Merit points.
It was then time for the professionals to show their skills.
“What a double elimination round it was,” he said.
“It was five gruelling sets to qualify for top eight. Some great sets were fought out with some top-ranked players coming up short in the loser’s pool and finding themselves trying to fight back to winner’s pool.”
Favourites such as Marco das Neves, Juan Nel and Jason Cook fell out after losing their matches.
Thorne van Zyl lost a match and then got paired up with an old-time favourite Wynand Roos from Pretoria in the loser’s pool to find out who would face Jason Vickers in the finals.
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Jason did not lose a single top match in the elimination rounds.
“Wynand and Thorne have competed against each other before,” said Steven.
“After a great comeback from Wynand, he outdrove Thorne and found himself in the finals after four continuous sets in the loser pool.”
Jason Wickers lost the first of two final sets after Wynand outdrove him by a few metres.
“Our second final found players switching boxes and Wynand had to beat Jason one more time to win the day,” he said.
“Jason had other plans though and launched a 419m drive with his first ball hit in the second finals and won the day as well as the longest drive of the event. He claimed his second consecutive finals of 2021 season.”
Jason also now leads the Order of Merit point’s race, Marco falling into third spot and Thorne lying second on points but is still ranked number one in South Africa.
Jason is ranked second in South Africa and Marco ranked third.
“Congratulations to all our winners and thank you to all our fans and family who support us continuously,” concluded Steven.
The next event will take place on May 1 at the Grasslands Driving Range.
