Pieter Moolman made a superb eagle on the final hole in regulation play on Sunday to set him up for a play-off victory for his maiden Sunshine Tour title at the Fortress Invitational at Ebotse Links.
The eagle took him to 14-under for the 54-hole tournament, while Jayden Schaper, who led for the first two rounds was dropping a shot on the 17th. That meant that Schaper, who plays out of Ebotse, needed a birdie on the last to force the play-off.
Schaper played a sublime chip from below the green after short-siding himself with his approach to the par-five, and made the birdie. So Moolman and Schaper headed back up the 18th for the first hole of a sudden-death play-off.
Moolman could reproduce his heroic tee-shot from regulation play, but his approach from a tough uphill lie with the ball above his feet just short of a bunker hit the green and left him with a putt for eagle. Shcaper, meanwhile, had striped his drive 45 yards past Moolman up the centre, but his approach skipped over the green and his return chip left him with 15 feet for birdie.
Moolman’s eagle putt slipped three feet past the hole, and Schaper’s birdie attempt slipped agonisingly past on the right. He made the par putt, but Moolman’s birdie attempt was rammed confidently into the centre of the cup.
“I’ve been knocking on the door for quite a while,” said Moolman in his characteristically laconic fashion, “so to win feels pretty good.”
It was a round of real consistency as he hit 12 of 14 fairways in regulation, and 12 of 18 greens in regulation. It was his putting under pressure down the stretch which separated him from the field, eventually, as he made one-putts on the final two holes to get himself into the play-off.
In the end, though, that approach to 18 in regulation will be the shot that he will remember as the one which won him the tournament. “I hit it exactly as I wanted to,” he said. “And then, when I got into the play-off, I just had to treat every shot as just another golf shot.”
A shot behind Schaper in third on 13-under-par was American Dan Erickson, who closed with a five-under-par 67.
The round of the day came from Sean Bradley, who started his round with a double-bogey on the first. He took his revenge on the course by not dropping a single shot for the rest of the day. He made a hole-in-one on the eighth, and closed out his week with an eagle on 18. There were seven birdies in there too. That gave him a share of fourth with Richard Joubert.
In the end, Moolman converted his 17th career top-10 into a win, and climbed to seventh on the Sunshine Tour’s Luno Order of Merit.
