In boxing terms, the referee should have stopped the Vodacom Championship, but Hennie Otto had to keep going to deliver the coup de grace on Sunday with his final round five-under 67 to win by nine strokes.
He finished on 28-under-par 260, one shot off the Sunshine Tour tournament record of 29-under-par, set by Mark McNulty in Swaziland in 1987, and equalled by David Frost in the 1994 SA PGA Championship.
He’d set a Pretoria Country Club course record of 11-under 61 in the second round to lead by five, and he had to find some way of keeping his motivation levels up for the final half of the tournament.
“I just went out and approached the round as a match play event,” he said. “Jbe’ Kruger was the only one who could catch me, and, fortunately for me, he and Thomas Aiken were the ones who made the mistakes.”
Kruger’s challenge looked to have petered out on the back of some putts that just wouldn’t drop, continuing a trend which began in the third round.
This time, his woes were exacerbated by some poor work off the fairways and close to the greens. They were perhaps best exemplified on the 444-metre par-four 10th, where his second was such a poor shot that he ended up a long way for the green. For the umpteenth time, his chip came up short too, and he overshot the green with his fourth.
The resultant double-bogey while Otto made a good par save meant Kruger sank back to 10 off the pace at that stage, while Tjaart van der Walt was elevated into second for a while.
But he fought back and birdies on 16 and 18 saw him into second, one ahead of Adilson Da Silva and Aiken.
Aiken got his final position thanks to a birdie-eagle finish to edge out Michiel Bothma who finished fifth, with Van der Walt sharing sixth with Grant Veenstra.
But for all the jostling for position, the truth is Otto’s opponents were out on their feet after a display of golf that the winner rated as close to the best he’s ever played.
“Maybe my win in the Italian Open in 2008 was better,” he said, “because Oliver Wilson threw a 63 at me, and I only had a one-shot lead down the stretch.”
But there were elements which made this very sweet indeed: A friend who has lung cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy, and who walked all 18 with him on his way to the triumph. “How inspiring is that,” he said.
And Martin Maritz’s mother, who told Otto that he was her ‘son’ for the week. “It gives me goose bumps just telling that story,” he said.
And it was the support in his reborn Christian faith he got from a group of people called ‘Manne van die Woord’ (Men of the Word). “I had something to say about them, but we ran out of time in the prize-giving,” he laughed.
In truth, the goose bumps came from some of the most consistent golf he has ever played, and in the jaw-dropping margin of victory over some of the best players on the Sunshine Tour.
Two weeks on his new farm in the Northern Cape – “I’m going to be doing some real work,” he laughed – before he spends a brief period again on the European Tour is going to be a rest well-earned.
