Oosthuizen’s pragmatism rewarded at Sun City

The Gary Player Country Club layout loans you very little as a golfer, and it was a measure of Louis Oosthuizen’s experience and temperament that he worked out very quickly in Saturday’s third round of the Nedbank Golf Challenge that he was off his game and needed to avoid taking any risks.

It was a long, hard slog on the hottest day of the tournament so far, but Oosthuizen’s patience finally paid dividends on the last hole as he received a lucky bounce off the fringe right of the green and was left with an eight-foot putt for birdie, which he calmly slotted.

He was doubly rewarded, however, when leader Sergio Garcia bogeyed the 18^th.

The Spaniard had hooked his drive left of the fairway, which made it very difficult for him to attack the green as he had to go around a promontory and over water. Garcia got a flyer out of the rough and it flew into the grandstands. Although he got a free drop, he chipped past the flag and on to the fringe, and was unable to get up and down for par.

That meant two-shot swing as Oosthuizen, who stood on the final tee with a four-shot deficit, ended the penultimate round just two shots behind, his level-par 72 leaving him on eight-under-par overall, while Garcia’s one-under 71 lifted him to 10-under-par.

“It was a very big three for me, just the way I was playing. A two-shot swing on the last is great going into the final round and two behind is a helluva lot closer than four behind. Mentally it was a very big putt for me after a really lucky break with the ball rolling all the way down to the hole from the fringe. I’m ecstatic that I’m just two behind.

“From the get-go today I couldn’t do anything really, but I quickly realised that it was a day to not play myself out of contention. I had to take pars with the wind all over the place and I was very glad to finish level-par. I just wasn’t really giving myself good enough birdie opportunities. my game was just not there,” Oosthuizen said.

South Africa’s highest ranked golfer at number 39 in the world said he was not going to be focusing on Garcia and making Sunday’s final round into some sort of matchplay scenario.

“No, there are still so many players still in it, it’s not just between two guys. I’ll just do what I normally do, play my own game. After nine holes we’ll see where we are and maybe then have to push a bit. But I’ve got to play really well because Sergio is world-class and he missed a few short putts early on otherwise he could have easily gotten away from all of us,” Oosthuizen said.

Lee Westwood, a two-time winner like Garcia, is one of the pack lurking on seven-under-par, three strokes off the lead, and he is going to relish the opportunity to go for another crown on a course he loves.

“This course really suits me. It requires that you hit the ball straight and have a lot of patience with the breeze changing all the time and some strange things happening out there. And I’ve always enjoyed the greens, they require a bit of imagination with a lot of big-breaking putts.

“It reminds me a bit of Augusta because sometimes you are hitting away from the pins and there are areas you don’t want to be putting from. The Kikiyu grass doesn’t suit everybody, but I have good ball-control and it suits me, I think my stroke average is pretty good around here.

“It’s lovely to be in contention at the ripe old age of 45 against these youngsters. I was chatting to Haotong Li and he was patting my stomach and saying I had a bit of a belly, so I told him he still had 23 years of eating and drinking to go and then we’ll see how he looks,” Westwood joked.

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.