Charl Schwartzel is the two-time defending Joburg Open champion and is favourite to complete his hat-trick this week.
Schwartzel (7/2 Tournament Outright @
Betfred) missed last week’s Africa Open and, in his absence, Louis Oosthuizen made it back-to-back wins at the event to kick off his year in perfect style.
The 2010 Open champion is not in the field this week, as his wife is due to give birth any day, and so the scene is set for the 2011 Masters winner to match his compatriot and get a win on the board early in the season.
Schwartzel has ‘owned’ this event for the past two years, winning by six shots in 2010 and by four strokes 12 months ago before going on to triumph at Augusta to claim his first major.
While he did not return to the winner’s enclosure again in 2011, the 27-year-old was the model of consistency, sealing nine top 10 finishes and, with three top 10s to end the year, he is currently ninth in the world rankings with every chance of improving that standing over the next 12 months.
Schwartzel is surely going to be a multiple major winner if he maintains his form but has already stated that one of his goals outside the big-four events this year is to become the first South African to win the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship, which runs from January 26-29.
With that in mind and the fact that this week’s tournament is being played in the city of his birth, there seems every reason to suggest that he will be well up for the challenge and desperate to make it three titles in a row.
So who might stand in his way?
The simple answer is not too many players, as the field has a similarity to last week’s, when it was suggested that the winner was only ever going to come from a handful of players, as the field contained any number of journeymen from the Sunshine Tour.
Retief Goosen proved that he is far from a spent force with a third-place finish last week and, having put together four decent rounds, he may be one to challenge this week (Goosen 11/5 Top Five Finish).
The 42-year-old may not be the force of old but he is a double major winner and must be respected even though he has not won an event on the European Tour for nearly five years.
Tjaart van der Walt pushed Oosthuizen all the way at the Africa Open to finish second and he can be backed at 45/1 to win this week, while Thomas Aiken’s challenge fell away as the week progressed to finish in 13th spot.
Aiken is third in the betting and proved last year by winning the Open de Espana that he knows how to get over the finishing line and it would be no surprise to see the 28-year-old challenging for the title on Sunday (Aiken 11/10 72-hole Match Result v Goosen).
Like last week, the rest of the field is made up of very average South Africans who have no chance of winning but there is a spattering of Europeans who might require a closer look.
England’s Danny Willett (25/1) managed a seventh-place finish on -19 in East London, while Scotland’s Alastair Forsyth (60/1) finished five shots off the pace back in fifth.
Frenchman Gregory Havret and England’s Robert Rock will also tee off and both are regular contenders in Europe and could cause a stir or too.
But a glance at results in Africa suggests that the tournaments are usually won by the home-grown stars and in South African golf at the moment, they do not come any bigger than Schwartzel, who would seem to have everything in his favour to land his third consecutive Joburg Open.
