DP World Tour : Nedbank Golf Challenge Leaderboard Tee Times
Round 1 is well underway in hot sticky weather, Sun City, RSA on the Gary Player GC at this years Nedbank Golf Challenge in honour of Mr Player who was born November 1, 1935 celebrating his 90th season this week. ..more to follow
Kristoffer Reitan led the Nedbank Golf Challenge in honour of Gary Player on -9 after a superb opening 63 in Sun City.
Marcus Armitage and Jesper Svensson had set the early target at -6 66, and were later joined there by Adrien Saddier, but Reitan was out on his own after a stunning round featuring ten birdies and one dropped shot.
Reitan made a flying start to his round, clipping his approach at the first to two feet and holing from eight feet at the second for back-to-back birdies.
He picked up further shots at the 14th and 15th and though the 17th brought his one dropped shot of the round after he found sand off the tee, he holed from the fringe at the last to return -9.
Reitan said: "It was a brilliant day, very, very happy the way I played. Off the tee, in towards the greens, I was happy, and a couple of wedge shots that were really good, so that was nice to see, and I was rolling the putter well. I haven't had any particularly good results in South Africa so I'm hoping to change that this week.
"So it was a great start and I'm very, very pleased.
Svensson started on the back nine and played it in -1 before his inward nine featured two superb eagles, at the second and the ninth.
He said: “It was good, two eagles with tap-ins so that’s always fun!
Armitage also started from the tenth and turned in 31 before adding a sixth birdie at the first. He moved to -8 with gains at the first and sixth only for a closing seven at the par-five ninth to leave him tied with Svensson and Saddier.
The Englishman said: "I made a lot of birdies and just had a lot of fun out there and yeah, just been a cool day.”
Saddier had six birdies in a bogey-free round and he said: "Yeah, it was good. Played solid, just missed two greens so pretty solid with the irons, so got a lot of birdie chances.
"It’s nice (to go bogey free). I didn’t do that much this year, so good to have one to start the new season. Really pleased."
Garrick Higgo and Shaun Norris were the leading home players in a group of six tied for fourth on -4 68. Higgo said: "My putter kept me in it. It's still a long way to go, but it's a great start."
Tom McKibbin, Julien Guerrier, Thomas Detry and Haotong Li were the other players on -4 68
Canadian Nick Taylor had an eagle, birdie in his last 5 holes, T20 -2 70.
europeantour.com
Bryan Angus
No comments:
Post a Comment