An excellent day with the putter saw Albert Venter to a superb final round 66 and a playoff for the FBC Zimbabwe Open at Royal Harare Golf Club.
With the 26-year-old sinking a 16-foot birdie putt on the second playoff hole, he claimed his maiden Sunshine Tour title on May 22.
Venter had to hold off Stefan Wears-Taylor, who also shot 66 in the final round, and Louis Albertse (67) in the playoff after the trio finished the tournament on 10-under-par.
They all parred the 18th in the first playoff hole, but on their next attempt, Venter spun a sand-wedge from the fairway back to 16 feet from the pin and then nailed the birdie putt, with Albertse and Wears-Taylor unable to make their shorter putts.
Venter’s success with the putter was unexpected because the Silver Lakes golfer struggled with the short stick in the third round.
“I knew I needed to keep grinding today, follow my processes, and my goal was to get in contention on the back nine,” said Venter, who began the final round five shots off the lead.
“I was playing with the American, Dan Erickson, and he was off to a flyer – six-under after seven holes. So he was the guy to catch and I tried to stay within touching distance of him. Then I caught fire on the back nine and I kept following my processes, keeping the ball in play, hitting the greens and making the putts.
“Yesterday [Saturday] was a bad putting day – 31 putt, Last night I spent an hour or two on the green and found something. The putter paid off today with the prize,” Venter said.
Venter finished runner-up (his best finish on tour) in last September’s Sunshine Tour Invitational at Centurion Country Club, but two missed cuts in October probably cost him a top-50 finish in the final 2021/22 order of merit.
Erickson was still in the lead when he birdied the par-three 15th, which Venter bogeyed, but the American was knocked out of contention by a bogey-bogey finish.
Wears-Taylor birdied 16 and 17 to claim the outright lead, but then bogeyed the last to force him into a playoff, with Albertse staying alive as he birdied 18.
Venter’s round was built around three successive birdies from the seventh hole, and he then burnt up the back nine with a run of four straight birdies from the 11th hole. Despite dropping a shot at 15, he stuck around to the bitter end.
Overnight leader Luca Filippi finished in the seventh position after shooting a 75, while Louis de Jager and Jaco Ahlers joined Erickson in fourth place, two shots behind after they both made 70s on Sunday.
