Blemish-free 63 puts Oosthuizen into Sun City lead
[Friday, November 15, 2019 08:40:44]Kidney stones threatened to have Louis Oosthuizen pull out of this year’s Nedbank Golf Challenge hosted by Gary Player after he suffered the whole of Wednesday, however the reigning South African Open champion pulled through in spectacular fashion, carding a perfect nine-under-par 63 to lead by three strokes at Sun City.
“I suffered with kidney stones the whole of yesterday,” he revealed after his opening round at the Gary Player Country Club. “I spent a bit of time in hospital, and then I was crawling around my hotel room at three o’clock this morning, and on my knees next to the toilet. It was very uncomfortable, but at six or seven o’clock in the morning it started feeling a lot better.
“You could see me walking slower and just doing everything a bit slower out there. I know the swing is there and the putting is there. I just need to be healthy to be able to play. It got better a lot faster than I thought. So, I just slowed everything down and it went nicely.”
He opened with back-to-back birdies in his opening two holes and then after two pars, two more birdies followed and those were followed by three straight pars as he turned in 32. He turned things up at the turn as he made a hat-trick of birdies from the 10th to the 12th. He made further gains on the 14th, picking up an important birdie before another made its way onto his card on the par-four 17th.
President’s Cup International captain, Ernie Els, defending champion of the Nedbank Golf Challenge, Lee Westwood along with rising star and last season’s Sunshine Tour Order of Merit winner, Zander Lombard, signed for 68s, and are in a three-way tie for fourth after day one.
Richard Sterne and winner of the recently-played Vodacom Origins of Golf Final, George Coetzee, share the seventh spot with eight other players, including England’s Tommy Fleetwood and Paul Waring, at three-under-par 69. Erik van Rooyen is two-under par and shares 17th while Justin Harding shares 38th after an opening round of one-over-par.