European Tour Reports

Find out about the hottest golf events taking place on a green near you! With reports on some of the most important events from the European and PGA Tours

A clean sheet in South Africa

Africa Open, first European Tour event of 2012

The European Tour 2012 will have an exciting start in South Africa. January 5 to 8 will be the start of a new season of great golf that will finish in Dubai on Sunday November 25. This weekend the Tour’s best players will compete for the Africa Open Championship at the southeast coast of South Africa, at the East London Golf Club.

The Africa Open in East London is the first event in eleven months of exciting golf. It is the first tournament of 46 events that together form the 2012 Race to Dubai. The tournament in South Africa will be the kick-off event for a season with some exciting highlights. One of the tournaments to watch is the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles from August 23-26, the final counting event for players aiming to qualify for the European Team bound for The 2012 Ryder Cup, to be held at Medinah Country Club in Illinois.

Local players dominate

The opening event of the Tour is a fairly new tournament that is only held for the third time. In both 2010 and 2011 a South African golfer was crowned champion: Charl Schwartzel and Louis Oosthuizen. Local players have done extremely well at this 1 million Euro event: 14 of the 25 players that were in or tied for the top ten in the past two seasons have been South African, major champion Retief Goosen being one of them.

East London will also be the place for many players to start the new season with a clean sheet. For some, the pressure is up from hole 1. 2010 Africa Open Champion Louis Oosthuizen will feel the pressure. His 2011 campaign got off to a great start when he holed out from eight foot at the first hole of a play-off for the Championship.

The course: coastal dunes and dense bush

The East London golf course offers a lovely location in sunny summer conditions, featuring a unique natural course layout. The course meanders through coastal dunes and dense, indigenous bush. The course is overlooking the Indian Ocean, offering breathtaking views of the sea and Nahoon Reef surf spot. The course requires golfers to be in good shape, with steep climbs up and down the dunes. The signature hole – the par-four hole 9 – is one of South Africa's great golf holes. The dogleg played from an elevated tee over an undulating fairway into a valley is a favoured and feared hole among many European Tour players.

This is a course where the wind may come into play, which can make things rather complicated for the players. Louis Oosthuizen considers the East London Golf Course a true ‘risk and reward’ course. “It’s the kind of golf course that really challenges your game when the wind is up, but it also offers great opportunities for low scoring when you can keep it in play,” he said. “Hopefully the wind will pick up, because I think that’s the way the golf course is meant to be played.”