It’s been a long road to recovery, and Zander Lombard tees it up this week in the Sunshine Tour and HotelPlanner Tour co-sanctioned NTT Data Pro-Am at Fancourt for the first time in over seven months after his surgery.
Lombard had an operation in July last year to repair a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament and meniscus tear, and has had to work patiently through all the stages of rehabilitation while watching his world ranking drop from inside the top 100 to his current 263rd.
After last year’s tournament in George, Lombard finished in a share of sixth to reach his career-high of 96th, and in his last event before the surgery, the Italian Open, he’d slipped to 135th after a run of strong performances on the DP World Tour, including second in the Bahrain Championship.
His return to action this week in George will be watched keenly, and it takes place in an environment that will help him test out his recovery and check out his skill levels with somewhat less pressure than a normal tour event.
The pro-am format will give him a chance to enjoy the process rather than spending hours during each of the at least three rounds he will play evaluating every little twinge in his knee and every little deviation from the norm of every single shot.
But, despite all that, Lombard will be shooting for the stars all week, eager to justify all the discomfort he has been through and all the recovery work he has done.
Of course, he will be up against players who have been in wonderful form and who will not take their feet off their respective pedals in sympathy for him.
Chief amongst those will be Daniel van Tonder, who also flourishes in the slightly less pressurised environment of a pro-am. His two victories in two weeks, and his share of sixth the week after those in the Cell C Cape Town Open last week, have taken him perilously close to regaining his DP World Tour playing privileges outright again by winning three times in a season on the HotelPlanner Tour. Victory at Fancourt will pull that off for him, as well as adding a victory to his already bulging Sunshine Tour resume of 12 victories.
There are others, of course, who could win, and there are also seven players in the field who have won already: Former champions Alan McLean, Hennie Otto, Oliver Bekker, Jaco van Zyl, George Coetzee, Jaco Ahlers and Wilco Nienaber will all tee it up at their happy hunting ground, although McLean won far back enough to have done so at Sun City in 2006, rather than at Fancourt where the tournament moved in 2009.
