Strydom top of the leaderboard
Ockie Strydom is the owner of 37 top-10 finishes on the Sunshine Tour and was the runner-up at the Gary Player Country Club in the 2019 Sun City Challenge.
So it is never too surprising to see him at the top of the leaderboard as he was after the first round of the Blue Label Challenge at the famous 7831-yard course on October 13.
In a tournament using a modified Stableford scoring system, Strydom shot a seven-under-par 65, his eight birdies and just one bogey, giving him a total of 15 points.
That left the 36-year-old one point ahead of Ruan Korb (66), while Jayden Schaper from the East Rand and Rhys Enoch also shot six-under-par but finished on 13 points because they did not have an eagle on their cards, as Korb did on the par-five 11th.
Strydom’s solitary bogey came on the first hole, and he stayed on minus-one points through the next four holes, but thereafter the Serengeti golfer found the conditions and warm temperatures much to his liking with three successive birdies from the sixth hole.
He was especially potent on the back nine, where he collected five birdies.
“On the first hole I hit two in the bush and I thought ‘here we go’. But I kept calm and then I changed my ball after five holes because that one wasn’t really working. I then got a lucky bounce on the sixth green and I just started making birdies,” said Strydom.
“I was hitting it nicely off the tee, finding the fairways and then hitting my irons quite close. The putting then works out itself.”
Strydom is known to be a big hitter off the tee and, with summer rains having arrived in the Pilanesberg, the fact that there is not as much run on the fairways as in winter has suited him.
