Janco Breedt, Ivan Verster and Tiaan Richter
Tiaan Richter (Akasia CC) has successfully defended the Gauteng North Golf Union junior Match-Play title.
The event was hosted at Akasia Country Club between the 12th and the 14th of July. In order to qualify for the event the players need to participate in 36 holes of stroke play. The top 8 of each division then progress to the match play stages.
The divisions were divided into the A division (handicaps +3 to 6) B division (handicaps 7 to 18) and Forward T’s (Boys under 13 and all girls). The C division players are excluded because they play only 27 holes and their score is based on points.
The champion of the day was Akasia’s own Kifentse Nukeri (he ended the tournament on 3 under par), but he withdrew from the match-play section due to prior commitments that saw him play in the Tshwane Junior Open. The top seed for the event was Leif Sinclair (Pretoria CC), whilst the defending champ ranked second after the stroke play.
The first round saw two upsets with 8th ranked Ricardo van der Westhuizen (Akasia CC) upsetting the number one seeded Sinclair and Zander Lombard (Silver Lakes) beating last year’s finalist Koketso Mokumo (Akasia CC). Kyle Campbell (CCC) had a titanic battle against Reinard Vermeulen (ZCC) winning on the 19th hole. Ricardo beat Zander and Tiaan beat Kyle to set up an all Akasia final.
The B division saw JP de Vos (CCC) as the top seed. He faced Jesse Venter (Waterkloof) in the second round who upset Viaan van Oijen (Akasia CC) in the first round. Janco Breedt (Akasia CC) met Nico Els (CCC) in the second round with Janco beating Nico to progress to the final where he met JP. Janco won the B division making it two out of three for the Akasia juniors.
The Front T division was played for the first time this year. This match play tournament should be contested from scratch in the different divisions, but due to the differences in stroke rating of the forward and club T’s this is impossible. Instead we had everybody playing from the forward T’s competing against one another.
The first round results went according to form with Ivan Verster (CCC) top seed meeting Jo-Lindie Richter (Akasia CC) 3rd seed in the second round. Michael Ferreira (Woodhill CC) 2nd seed met Fabi de Abreu (Woodhill CC) with Fabi winning to meet Ivan in the final. Ivan won a great match to win the inaugural GNGU Front T championship.