Louis de Jager on day 2 of the 2021 PGA Championship at St Francis Links on November 5th
Photo: Carl Fourie / Gallo Images
Louis de Jager will lead the South African PGA Championship weekend with a two-stroke attempt to win this prestigious title for the second time in his career.
The event will take place at St Francis Links in St. Francis Bay.
Yesterday De Jager added a 66 to his opening 68 and led the field with 10 under par. His next challengers are the first round leader, Steve Surry, who struggled to a second round of 73, and Michael Hollick, who signed for a 70, a total of eight under par. And young star Jayden Schaper remains after a second round of 72 just three strokes behind on the hunt.
De Jager scored most of his goals on his second nine, the first nine of the course, where he made five birdies over a six-hole stretch to work his way to the top as he build on his 2019 triumph with South Africa’s second oldest professional want tournament.
“It’s great to be home and see some familiar faces and it feels just as good to be back at the top of a leaderboard,” said De Jager, who tried to campaign for the European Tour, before you decide to return to the Sunshine Tour.
And he now has the opportunity to become a rare multiple winner of the South African PGA Championship, a title he believed was one of his top priorities when he turned pro in 2008.
“When I turned pro, the South African PGA Championship was always the biggest event on our tour, apart from the events sanctioned jointly with the European Tour. When I got out on the tour, I always wanted to win and it was really special to win it for the first time in 2019. It would be great to win it twice. ”
The St. Francis Links golf course has been unusually forgiving this week, largely due to the lack of wind that can make it a golf course beast.
This, as well as a combination of De Jager’s own patience and an improved putting form, helped get him to the top of the leaderboard.
“I wasn’t really in shape in the first round and today I hit the ball well and made a few puts and just stayed patient. But the golf course was great. It’s built for a bit of wind, of course, but I think it’s a great location for one of the Sunshine Tour’s flagship tournaments. “