European Tour Fantasy Golf Predictions – South African Open

2018 South African Open Preview

It’s been a long and exciting year, and finally the curtain call is near for the European Tour in 2018.

Next week’s Alfred Dunhill Championship is the official year-ending event, with this week’s South African Open a manic appetizer with more than 240 players in the field!

Last time out the Tour hosted something of a double-header, with Cameron Smith going back-to-back in the Australian PGA Championship and Kurt Kitayama taking the spoils at the Mauritius Open.

The former will surely be looking to claim a maiden victory over on the PGA TOUR in 2019, and in wind-affected events where a strong short game is key certainly don’t be too quick to write him off. Kitayama, meanwhile, showed how importance confidence is in a golfer of any repute: his win came just two starts after he gained his Tour Card with a fine showing at Q School.

There is a strong, largely South African, field in tow this week; unsurprising really given that this is their national open. The likes of Louis Oosthuizen, Branden Grace and Charl Schwartzel have been the gold standard for South African golf in the past decade or so, although they can expect plenty of talented youngsters to be nipping at their heels this week.

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It will take some winning this week. This event, an amalgamation of the ‘old’ South African Open and the Jo’burg Open, will feature 240 players across two courses at the Randpark Golf Club in Johannesburg. It’s a chaotic affair with the cut line at 75 places, so there will be plenty of high-profile names that miss out on the weekend.

The Firethorn track will host one of the opening two rounds and then the final 36 holes exclusively. It’s a lengthy Par 72 at 7,595 yards, with the traditional four Par 5s for the players to attack. It’s the more difficult of the two layouts but is still eminently beatable; Christofer Blomstrad firing a round of 62 here in the Jo’burg Open 12 months ago.

The other course is Bushwillow, which is a shorter (7,114 yards, Par 71) track that features tree-lined fairways that can block out even sound tee shots from a clear approach at the green. It’s a thinker’s layout, but even so it’s again one that can be tamed with relative ease: Jo’burg Open champion Shubhankar Sharma compiling a 61 here in his winning effort.

Played at an altitude of greater than 5,000 ft above sea level, the South African Open will be easy enough out on the course, but with a predicted cut line of around -4 there really won’t be much margin of error for the players.

So who makes our draft this week?

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This Week’s South African Open Fantasy Picks & Predictions

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This Week’s South African Open Fantasy Picks

Dylan Frittelli – $10,200 – There are players of a higher profile than Frittelli in the field this week, but he is playing some excellent golf of late and deserves respect.

His upward trend started in the summer with three consecutive top-25 finishes on the European Tour’s Links swing, and while he is yet to make inroads in the US, where he gained his PGA TOUR card, there was a promising T9 in the Web.com Tour’s Albertsons Boise Open.

Just lately he has returned to the Tour where he made his name, and compiled returns of T21 in the Nedbank Challenge, T7 in the DP World Tour Championship and T5 in the Mauritius Open.

There are lots of birdie opportunities available at Randpark, and that’s good news for Frittelli, who ranked 13th for Birdie Average in 2018; one place above Tommy Fleetwood, one below Sergio Garcia. That’s a sign of a class act.

Dean Burmester – $9,800 – There were lots of missed cuts from Burmester in the summer, but just recently he has upped his game and that bodes well ahead of a trip home.

T11 at the Nedbank Challenge was followed by T4 at the DP World Tour Championship, and both of those were events of a higher class than this and at tougher courses, too.

Burmester is in his element in birdie-fests, and the opportunity to hit plenty of irons off the tee and not lose too much length – the altitude will make the ball fly – will help to iron out his occasionally ragged tee work with the big stick.

One of the few in the field with happy-ish memories of Randpark (T19 in the Jo’burg Open) and one of the few with a European Tour sanctioned title to his name, expect Burmy to shine this week.

Justin Harding – $8,700 – Here’s a guy who won four times worldwide in 2018: twice on South Africa’s Sunshine Tour, and twice on the Asian Tour.

So there’s no wonder he tops the Sunshine Tour’s Order of Merit, and Harding has remained in form lately too with T4 in the Taiwan Masters, solo 10th at the Yeangder Masters, T14 at the Hong Kong Open ad solo fourth at last week’s Mauritius Open.

The 32-year-old will be desperate to make his mark on a European Tour sanctioned event, and with eight career wins to his name on South African soil what better place to do it than Randpark.

Christiaan Bezuidenhout – $7,400 – We have been committed to drafting Bezuidenhout quite a few times this year, and while he rarely shoots the lights out he is a consistent performer nonetheless.

T15 at the Mauritius Open last week, the 24-year-old is a versatile sort who has banked top-30s at the tough Valderrama, high up in the sky at Crans-sur-Sierre and by the seaside at the Sicilian Open, so this is a player who can adapt his game to his surroundings.

T30 here last year, which would have been so much better but for a closing round of 75, Bezuidenhout is a solid player on home soil and we once again expect him to out-perform his salary this week.

Scott Jamieson – $7,000 – It’s no coincidence that Jamieson saves his best performances for South African soil.

His sole European Tour win came in the country back in 2013, and in the past couple of years he has recorded finishes of solo second at the Nedbank Challenge, T4 at the Alfred Dunhill Championship and solo seventh at the Tshwane Open.

Having not played competitively since the British Masters, Jamieson has had plenty of time to work on his game way from prying eyes, and in not making the Race to Dubai finals he also has the perfect motivation to set him up for a big 2019.

Jaco van Zyl – $6,900 – There’s an element of risk in drafting a player returning from a long-term injury, but it’s been a case of so far, so good for Van Zyl.

The South African struggled initially after recovering from his wrist complaint, but found some form at the Origins of Golf event in October (T10) before finishing a respectable T23 in the Mauritius Open last week, which he bookended with rounds of 65 and 66.

The 39-year-old has won 14 Sunshine Tour events and twice lost out in play-offs of European Tour events, and so he can clearly get into the mix in decent company.

If his wrist is completely healed, he could well and truly outperform his salary here.

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Cover photo via Instagram