It didn’t matter one little bit when JC Ritchie shot his worst round of the week so far on Saturday, because his seven-under-par 65 at Durban Country Club took him a staggering 10 shots clear after the third round of the Sunshine Tour’s Jonsson Workwear Open.
Ritchie has been bogey-free for the whole week so far, and, after scores of nine-under-par in the first and the second rounds, seven-under-par might have seemed a little ho-hum, but, at 25-under-par for the tournament so far, the rest of the field seems to be engaged in a battle for second.
Louis Oosthuizen set an astonishing 28-under-par in the winning tournament total of 260 in the 2008 Telkom PGA Championship, and a halfway decent round from Ritchie in the final round would almost certainly eclipse that. Steve Stricker had a 33-under-par for 255 in the 2009 Bob Hope Classic, and even that mark seems within reach for Ritchie.
The very good young Northern Irishman Tom McKibbin is closest to Ritchie, if 15-under-par can be termed close when it’s 10 shots behind. He had a six-under-par 66, seemingly to little or no avail. It was likewise the Dane Nicolai Kristensen, whose eight-under-par 64 put him in a share of third, 11 shots off the pace. Sweden’s Adam Blomme and Christopher Mivis of Germany shot paltry three-under 69s to share third with Kristensen.
Ritchie, by his own estimation, is playing the golf of his life, and there were many shots in his third round from which that was readily apparent. Equally, having started the day with a six-stroke lead, Ritchie was able to play a low-risk game, and he twice lipped out for birdie on the homeward nine having taken conservative approaches off the tee or to the green. There were other occasions, too, when, had he been more aggressive, he could easily have picked up more shots.
Instead, he can rest ahead of the final round knowing it will take both an extraordinary implosion by him as well as an extraordinary final round by his closest pursuers to deny him a second title in two weeks after he won last week’s Bain’s Cape Town Open.
