Heinrich Bruiners lay awake ahead of the final round of the Sunshine Tour’s Stella Artois Players Championship imagining the eight-under 64 he thought he’d need to win the tournament – and, on Sunday, he went out and got it just right.
In a week when the scores were low throughout, a bogey on the 10th looked as if it might herald the beginning of a further delay before the likeable Bruiners would be able to pull off just his second victory, 11 years after his first. But, instead, he focused steadfastly on his musing in the wee hours the night before and birdied his last three holes to pull off a one-stroke victory at 28-under-par.
“At half-past-one last night, I was envisioning, I was seeing minus eight,” an emotional Bruiners said. “I didn’t know if it was going to be enough, but I knew I was going to get close to that. So it’s crazy. It’s written in the stars.
“I’m just happy it’s over. I never stopped believing. It was tough. It was very tough. Because, you know, it’s like we all fight to get on the big stage, but it’s just really nice to stand here with a trophy. So I’m just really, really grateful. My girlfriend, she said to me, stay focused. But she was here for me from the first day, and I said to her, I’m going to do something. I’m going to do something special this week.”
His win held off three players, all of whom would have made worthy winners. One was Jaco Ahlers, who has been there 11 times before on the Sunshine Tour. And, try as he might, he was unable to pick up a single birdie on the final five holes, despite doing just about everything right.
The other two would have as popular as Bruiners was as possible winners.
Haydn Porteous has languished in the depths of despair about his game after becoming a double winner on the DP World Tour by the age of 23. Now, nearly 30, he has had to do a lot of soul-searching as he tries to play the way he knows he can. While he might feel a small twinge of disappointment at his dropped shot on the ninth, he will use his hard-won maturity to relish his share of second on 27-under-par.
Michael Hollick had his lone Sunshine Tour victory in 2015, and has battled to scale those kinds of heights again. Between 2020 and 2023, he was unable to play his way into the top 10 of any tournament, until his share of fourth in the Fortress Invitational in October last year. But even that did not herald anything better, and his closing run of three birdies in the last four holes saw him close in 68 and share second.
It’s play like that which makes the Sunshine Tour such a difficult tour to win on – a fact to which Bruiners alluded: “Just thank you to everyone, and I think also the Sunshine Tour players, all the guys, they’ve stepped up to another level. It’s pushed me to work even harder. I came close and it’s been such a long journey to stand with the trophy again.”
