South Africa win junior title in Harare

IN HARARE, ZIMBABWE

Defending champions South Africa on Friday produced an excellent 17 under par 199 in the fourth and final round at the Royal Harare Golf Club, to retain the Africa Junior Golf title, and a ticket to the 2017 Toyota World Junior Championship in Japan in June.

And it was Garick Higgo who led the South African challenge, firing an impressive seven under par 65, while Jayden Schaper brought 66 in addition to Luca Filipi’s 68 for a four total of 23 under par 841 that saw beating hosts Zimbabwe by 38 shots.

“I am very excited that all the four boys produced their best performance today to wind up the event in great style’’ said South African coach Eden Thompson who said the boys just met last weekend for the trip to Zimbabwe.

“This being a strokeplay and more or less individual effort, we did not see the need to bring the boys together in a long period."

South Africa will be joined in Japan by Zimbabwe, who posted a total of 15 over par 878, with a round of 688 by Justin Kersten.

Usually when more than 10 countries participate, the winner and second placed team qualify for the World championship. This will be the 10th time Zimbabwe will be joining South Africa to the Toyota event.

“We did not perform well the way we expected today but our consolation is that we qualified for the trip to Japan," said veteran Zimbabwean coach Roger Baylis, who has produced many professional golfers in Zimbabwe.

It was not however a good day for the Kenyan boys whose top player Agil Is-Haq started well with a level par in the first nine before hitting a number of double and triple bogeys at the back nine for 14 over par and the day’s 86 with Zubair Khan firing the team’s best round of 79 while Kibugu Mutahi carded eight over par 80 for an aggregate of 979 which pushed them down to eighth place out of the 12 teams.

This is worse than last year’s sixth place finish in Tunisia. Meanwhile Uganda which had started well in the first two rounds, finished in fifth place on 932 gross, behind Morocco and the much improved Re-Union who finished third on 917 gross.

The four South African boys also clinched the first four positions in the individual category led by Luca Filipi on 12 under par 276, followed by Jayden Schaper on 282 while Garrick Higgo was third on 287, just one shot better than Christo Lamprecht on 288.

South Africa also won the girls title with a score of 580 gross, beating Zimbabwe by 61 shots as Kenya finished third on 666 despite Kellie Gachaga’s 76 in the final round.

Gachaga was fourth in the individual. Meanwhile, Zambia whose player Martha Matyola was disqualified for un specified reasons, came home last with 703. The 2018 championship will be hosted by Morocco.