Casandra Alexander felt she wasn’t playing that well on Thursday in the second round of the Sunshine Ladies Tour’s SuperSport Ladies Challenge presented by Sun International, but the feeling was completely contradicted by her five-under-par 67.
Added to her first-round of two-under-par 70, Alexander has a five-stroke lead at the top of the leaderboard at Gary Player Country Club. There are players who have the larger part of the second round still to play, but the closest player to her who has completed her round was Clara Young of Scotland.
“I actually didn’t know I was five-under,” said Alexander. “I didn’t feel like I was making any putts. On the third, I missed a two-foot tap-in because I rushed it. I knew I was under par, but I thought I was one or two. So I said to my caddie that we needed to make birdie on the 17th or 18th. On 17, I just missed the putt, and 18 is always a tough hole. I stuck it pin-high left and made the putt. I thought that was what I needed. When I went into recording and added my score, I couldn’t believe I was five-under. With all the silly mistakes, I could easily have been eight or nine.
“But I’m very happy with the round. I still had a couple of soft drops, I’d call them, with a couple of putts missed. I didn’t feel like I was putting very well, but when I added them up, I had 29 putts.”
It was a tough day, with, as there was on the first day, another lengthy interruption for bad weather conditions. As Alexander said, it affects everyone. “Stop-start play is difficult to do,” she said. “I think I got a bit of an advantage on the second round. We were on the 10th green, so it wasn’t in the middle of the round, luckily, but the whole of yesterday I had stopping and starting. And we went to the 10th green three times today before we actually got into it, but once we got into it, we finished the whole 18.”
For Alexander, the good score on a tough course has come from work she has been doing for quite some time. “Something I’ve worked on the last couple of years that has really helped my game, even when I’m not hitting the ball well, is distance control,” she said. “So if I hit the number I want to hit, whether it’s right or left, I’ll most likely have a putt.
“That happened with both my rounds so far. I gave myself a lot of chances out there, and when I did hit it close, I felt I should be able to make the putt. I hit 14 or 15 greens today, and in the first round I hit 16 greens. The greens are a little slower than normal, but that makes them forgiving. I wouldn’t say one thing stood out for me. That’s a good sign for me because that means we’re building the overall package.”
She is also acutely aware it has to be more of the same in the final round. “Same gameplan tomorrow,” she said. “Maybe towards the last few holes, things might change depending on where the scores are and what all the other players do. But there’s only one way to play Gary Player Country Club, and that’s smart aggressive. Once you start getting defensive, you see how small the fairways and greens start looking.”
If she can get into the kind of zone she was in her second round again, and score without feeling as if she’s scoring, she could just run away with it.
