WP in strong position to secure SA IPT
Western Province defeated Boland 7 ½ – 4 ½ on Thursday to put themselves into pole position to take the South African Inter Provincial Tournament on a blustery Hermanus Golf Club course.
It was a clash worthy of the two table-toppers, with defending champions Boland making early pace-setters Western Province fight every inch of the way in the afternoon singles games.
Justin Turner holed a chip from the fringe for par on the 18th in his game with Riaan Gerber, and when Gerber three-putted it was all square in a match-up which might have had Boland levelling the singles at 4-4.
“The singles this afternoon showed how important the 3-1 lead in the foursomes in the morning was,” said Western Province captain Werner Theart.
Every game except one went to the 17th or 18th hole: Cameron Johnston went down 4 and 3 to Jacques Blaauw. “I couldn’t get a par to save my life,”
said Johnston. “Birdies, sure, but no pars,” he said as he birdied the ninth.
Theart himself went down 3 and 1 to JJ Senekal, and Stephen Swanepoel lost
2 and 1 to Philip Gerber.
So Western Province can lose by eight points in their final match to Free State and Northern Cape on Friday and still win the title, but don’t count on that happening: “We want to win all five,” said Theart.
Free State and Northern Cape won their match against Ekurhuleni 7 ½ – 4 ½.
In the other A section match, Gauteng North lost at the final hole to Central Gauteng, 6 ½ – 5 ½. It was a bitter pill for Gauteng North captain Johan Steyn to swallow: “We’ve lost two and won two, so we are not winning anything big here,” he said. “We need our top players to come through for us,” he added.
KwaZulu-Natal took a giant stride towards ensuring they are promoted out of the B section when they defeated Mpumalanga 10 ½ – 1 ½, and even had rivals Eastern Province recovered enough from their morning 4-0 deficit to North West, the margin of KwaZulu-Natal’s win should be enough give them A section status when they host next year’s tournament at Durban Country Club.
In the event, Eastern Province didn’t recover enough, going down to North West Province 6 ½ – 5 ½.
For KwaZulu-Natal, only Jon Campbell was unlucky enough to lose his singles match in the afternoon, going down to Mpumalanga’s PG van Zyl 4 and 3. Mark Cox and Jared Harvey were the big winners for KwaZulu-Natal, Cox with a 6 and 5 win over Lukas Steyn and Harvey defeating Hugo Malan 5 and 4.
Border got its first win of the week, defeating Limpopo 6 ½ – 5 ½ after a tense afternoon of singles play which ended 4-4.
For detailed scores click here