An aggressive approach off the tees on Wednesday helped Callum Mowat to a five-under-par 67 at Gary Player Country Club and the first-round lead in the SunBet Challenge hosted by Sun City.
Mowat, who battled to 91st on the Order of Merit in the 2021-22 season, and has just a missed cut and a share of 55th in his first two starts in the new season, posted his first sub-70 round of the season with six birdies and a bogey taking him a shot clear of Rourke van der Spuy’s four-under opener.
““I just tried to be aggressive, just let fly and stop trying to steer the ball around, let it run,” said Mowat. “The demanding thing about Gary Player Country Club is off the tee, but I was more aggressive than usual.
“That meant I could hit a lot more greens with shorter irons. My game-plan was to just get as far as possible off the tee, it worked well and then I just stuck to the plan.”
Mowat started well with birdies on one and two – they are playing the course in the more familiar order this week – but he dropped a shot on the par-five fifth and that could easily have seen him sink to a level of self-recrimination which has characterised bis recent play.
Instead, he picked up another birdie on the seventh, and then had three more gains on his unblemished homeward nine.
“I’ve been inside a deep hole and I needed to figure out how I felt about myself,” said Mowat. “It was nice to feel I belong out here and I am competitive, it was good to feel good about myself and where my game is trending. It made me feel good about me.”
Mowat’s aggression could easily have turned out to be a counterproductive approach: He hit just five of the 14 fairways in his round, but he did manage to hit 13 of the 18 greens in regulation. And when he got on to the greens, he needed just 25 putts. On a day where he was not putting as well, his strategy could have backfired. But it didn’t.
Van der Spuy started his round with eight pars, but he caught fire around the turn with birdies on the ninth and 10th holes, and he picked up further shots on the 13th and 17th holes in a bogey-free round.
Behind Mowat and Van der Spuy were MJ Viljoen and England’s Harry Konig on three-under, their 69s putting them in a share of third.
Lyle Rowe, Kyle Barker, Jaco Prinsloo and Jacques de Villiers were in a share of fifth on two-under.
