Aiken Ready for His Day in the Sun

Thomas Aiken

Thomas Aiken is just one win away from becoming the next South African name that world golf commentators will think hit them from the blindside.

At least they won’t battle as much as they did with Charl Schwartzel and Louis Oosthuizen to pronounce it correctly.

“I’m one win away from getting into the top 50 in the world,” said Aiken during a break back in South Africa from his campaigning on the European Tour and forays onto the US PGA Tour.

“Playing in all the majors – that’s the aim,” he said as he looked back on the start to his year and the seismic response in South Africa and around the world to Schwartzel’s Masters victory.

“I was on a plane on that Sunday when Charl was winning,” said Aiken, “and I got the pilot to come and tell me what was happening every 20 minutes.”

That he and Schwartzel are such good friends made things even sweeter for Aiken – and gave him a yardstick to measure the strength of South African golf, and where his own game could take him.

“South African golf is stronger than it has ever been,” he said, “and Charl’s win gave us all a glimpse of what we are capable of doing.”

And Aiken’s capabilities are those he has been nurturing in a thoughtful way while some of his contemporaries have been becoming more illustrious and twisting the tongues of television commentators all over the world.

It didn’t seem all that thoughtful at the beginning of the year when he reeled off 10 consecutive tournaments. “I pushed the envelope a bit then,” he admitted, “and in the end it was mental fatigue, more than anything else, that got to me.”

As ever, one of the reasons Aiken played 10 in a row was selfless: “I do feel obligated to play in the Sunshine Tour events,” he said. “After all, without the tour, we would not have the chances to play where and when we do, and we would not have the successes we have been having,” he said.

But what playing so much did show Aiken was that he belongs up there. “I was up there every week, and it feels as if I can win every week I tee it up,” he said.

“And right now, I’d rather have consistency than pulling off a win one week, and then getting nothing else for the next 10 months. It’s a matter of time before Sunday is going to be my day,” he added.

So after the break Aiken is taking in South Africa, he heads back to Europe on May 1 for the Open de España, followed by the Iberdrola Open in Mallorca.

“After that, I will prepare in London for the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth – that’s one of my focus tournaments, and I need to step back a bit and prepare for the tournaments that are important to me,” he said.

Then he goes on to play the Memorial on the PGA Tour.

And the Schwartzel victory will not put any additional pressure on him. “The pressure we feel is the pressure we put on ourselves,” he said.

“And I feel I should be getting a win soon.”

Immelman Smiling at Augusta National

Trevor Immelman 

Trevor Immelman made bogeys on six and nine, cancelling out his birdies on one and eight, then came roaring back with an eagle and a birdie to finish at three-under in the opening round of the Masters.

The 2008 champion was four shots off the incredible pace set by Rory McIlroy, who got his round off to an incredible start with three consecutive birdies on two, three and four. He birdied nine and 11, and picked up two more on 14 and 15 to take a two-shot lead into the second round at seven-under 65.

Right at the end of the day, Alvaro Quiros of Spain drew level with McIlroy with a round 10 strokes better than he had ever played at Augusta National before.

The Spaniard kept his round on track when he rescued himself from a parlous position on the 14th: His tee shot had gone right into the pine straw, and his second cannoned off a tree deeper into the rough. He managed to chip out sideways and made a good 12-footer for bogey which must have felt like a birdie in the circumstances.

He celebrated by making three birdies in the final four holes, smiling every step of the way.

Immelman’s eagle came on the 15th, a hole which gave up a lot of strokes in the opening round: He hit a brave five-wood in on the 485-metre (530-yard) par-five Firethorn over the water.

The ball flirted with the bunker on the right of the green, but caught the slope beautifully to finish six feet from the pin for Immelman to convert.

“From about 10 onward I started feeling a little bit more comfortable and hitting some shots out of the middle,” he said.

He closed out his round with a birdie on 18, getting his approach past the pin and avoiding the difficult read which plagued so many of the other players who had their second shots just short of the pin.

One of those players was Charl Schwartzel, who saw his three-footer for par on 18 lip out.

He still finished at three-under with Immelman, but that bogey on 1q8 was his second on his homeward nine after he dropped a shot on the 10th.

He had just one birdie on his way home – on the 16th – which was a counterweight to his two birdies and an eagle on his way out.

His eagle came on the 521-metre (570-yard) eighth, known as Yellow Jasmine: His high approach from the dip in the middle of the fairway came up a few metres short of the green, and his chip rattled the flagstick on its way in.

“I couldn't have asked for an easier little chip, and I managed to pull it off,” he said. “I got a lot of momentum out of that shot.”

So a man on his way back from an injury-induced drought – Immelman – and a man who many believe will win his first major soon – Schwartzel – were the best of the South Africans.

Retief Goosen was the next best at two-under, but he had a chance of being so much higher on the leaderboard: He eagled the first, and moved quickly to five-under through eight with three more birdies, but bogeys on 11, 12, 16, 17 and 18 dragged him down, and not even two birdies on that homeward nine were enough to salvage what might have been.

Tim Clark battled the pain in his wrist for one-over, Rory Sabbatini was two-over, and Ernie Els three-over together with Louis Oosthuizen.

Immelman was smiling, however: “My wrist is all the way back,” he grinned. “From about November, December last year, I didn’t have to worry about it as much, and I could go ahead and start practicing stuff I wanted to practice. At that point it just became a matter of me trying to get rid of all the bad habits I got into playing injured.

“So that’s been a process, and it’s been pretty good on the range. And I’ve started taking it better to the course. Every week seems to be getting a little bit better, but I’ve still got a long way to go to get back to where I was,” he added.

Jaco Van Zyl Starts European Adventure

Jaco van Zyl 

Jaco van Zyl gets his fledgling European Tour career underway on Thursday as he finally gets to play in Europe in the Sicilian Open at the Donnafugata Golf Resort and Spa.

It is the first European Tour to be staged on the island, and Van Zyl, who earned his European Tour card with a fifth-place finish in the European Tour Qualifying School Final Stage in Spain last December, will be one of four South Africans in the field.

Shaun Norris also earned his card in the Qualifying School event last year with his 14th place finish at Catalunya, and the other South Africans are Keith Horne, in by virtue of his 94th-place finish in last year’s Race to Dubai, and George Coetzee, who finished 19th at Catalunya.

Van Zyl, who won provincial colours for swimming and water-skiing, is also a keen surfer, and he will hope to ride the wave of his recent local successes as he explores European fairways.

He won four times on last year’s Sunshine Tour, and three times in 2009. He finished fourth on the 2009 Sunshine Tour Order of Merit and sixth in 2010 – the only thing preventing him winning those was the lack of a victory on one of the four South African events co-sanctioned by the European Tour.

His extraordinary 2010 Sunshine Tour season led him to the decision to play some golf in Europe in 2011, despite the fact that he is very much a player who prefers the comforts of home. That’s not hard to understand with the recent birth of his second son Oliver, and the pleasure his first son Cameron takes in seeing his dad play.

Van Zyl has said he will use the first few months of playing in Europe as a reconnaissance expedition for perhaps finding a European base for his young family ahead of the demands of schooling which are still some years away.

His immediate goal, however, will be to get a good finish in Sicily, where he will be up against players against whom he has played before and against whom he will feel capable of coming out on top.

The last winner of a European Tour event is SSP Chowrasia of India, who won the Avantha Masters in February.

MTC Namibia PGa Championship

Dean O’Riley will be taking aim at reducing the R218,000 gap between himself and rookie race leader Allan Versfeld at this week’s MTC Namibia PGA Championship.

O’Riley won the Freddie Tait trophy for the leading amateur at last year’s South African Open Championship, and Versfeld, by virtue of his share of seventh place in the Joburg Open, has got off to the kind of start in his professional career which makes him the target for all the other rookies in the field.

“It’s quite important for me to keep doing well, keep narrowing the gap,” said O’Riley. “I just hope that when the end of the season comes around, I don’t have to do too much work to catch him.”

He’s started the process of closing the gap in the weeks after the Telkom PGA Championship and ahead of the Namibia tournament.

“I’ve been working hard, on my swing and trying to get my short game up to scratch,” he said. “I’m happy with progress, too.”

He needs to keep improving the kind of results he has been getting since Versfeld’s big pay cheque in Johannesburg in January: He’s had a share of 20th at the Africom Zimbabwe Open, of 21st at the Dimension Data Pro-Am and of 40th at the Telkom PGA Championship.

During that time, Versfeld shared 36th in Zimbabwe, 25th in the Dimension Data Pro-Am and 42nd in the Telkom PGA Championship.

O’Riley needs to get further ahead of Versfeld if he is to make any headway on the gap, but it is not something he allows to dominate his thoughts during a tournament.

“I concentrate on my own play,” he said. “At end of a round, I will look to see how some of my old amateur friends and rivals are doing, but I don’t pay too much attention to others.

“But if I see Allan – or anyone else has had a good round, then I do try to respond. At the end of the day, I’m just trying to put some good finishes together this year.

But to win the Rookie of the Year award would be a nice way to get pro career started,” he added.