Nelson Mandela University student JP van der Watt claimed the Humewood Golf Club championships title at his first attempt with a win over Pieter Zietsman in Port Elizabeth on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The first-year B.Comm student, a member of the Madibaz Golf Club, took control of the final to defeat his in-form opponent 4\/3 after going into the back nine four up.<\/p>\n
Earlier he had edged Madibaz teammate Altin van der Merwe in a close tussle during the semifinals, defeating him 1-up.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Van der Merwe had taken the strokeplay section of the champs with rounds of 71 and 69 for a four-under par total of 140.<\/p>\n
In his semifinal, Zietsman showed good touch to defeat defending champion Francois van Coppenhagen 5\/4.<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old Van der Watt, who grew up in George and was educated at Glenwood House, overcame a lack of local knowledge and a faltering start to his semifinal to become the A division winner.<\/p>\n
He said it was a matter of persevering against Van der Merwe in the morning matchplay duel.<\/p>\n
“That was one of my worst rounds imaginable,” said Van der Watt, who was playing only his fourth round on the links layout.<\/p>\n
“I think early on I hit a provisional [ball] off nearly every tee box and I was one down after six holes.<\/p>\n
“For example, on the par-four fourth hole, I played to the green from the seventh fairway, but somehow I managed to hang in there.”<\/p>\n
Just over halfway through the front nine he said he managed to settle down and find some rhythm.<\/p>\n
“It started to go much better. That’s when the match really started between us and I was able to win 1-up.”<\/p>\n
In contrast, he said the afternoon final against Zietsman saw him produce one of his best rounds of the year.<\/p>\n
“Everything was just solid and I knew Pieter’s game was in a really good space, so I had to try to break him down with excellence of my own.<\/p>\n
“I was able to find the fairways, hit solid approaches and make the putts.<\/p>\n
“This helped me to turn four up, although it only really started on the par-three sixth. I made birdie there and then birdied the par-five seventh and the ninth.<\/p>\n
“From four up with nine to play, you shouldn’t really lose, but I just want to give all the glory to God because I wouldn’t have been able to achieve anything without Him.”<\/p>\n
He said it was a pleasure to compete in the Humewood event.<\/p>\n
“The tournament was so structured and professional and I really enjoyed playing in it.”<\/p>\n
In the B section final Gavin Hogg defeated Robbie Barnard 4\/3, while the C division went to Francois Vermaak, who beat Colin Broadley 1-up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nelson Mandela University student JP van der Watt claimed the Humewood Golf Club championships title at his first attempt with a win over Pieter Zietsman in Port Elizabeth on Sunday. The first-year B.Comm student, a member of the Madibaz Golf Club, took control of the final to defeat his in-form opponent 4\/3 after going into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1888,6918,6919,1771,2800],"class_list":["post-36839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-more-sport","tag-golf","tag-humewood-golf-club-championships","tag-jp-van-der-watt","tag-madibaz","tag-nelson-mandela-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}