GOLF NEWS - South Africa’s number two ranked junior golfer Casey Jarvis made a strong case for a Nomads SA Boys U-17 Championship double this week with a runner-up finish in the curtain-raiser at St Francis Links last Friday.
As soon as he arrived home after helping the GolfRSA Junior Proteas win the Toyota Junior Golf World Cup in Japan, Jarvis flew to the Eastern Province to compete in the Nomads National Order of Merit Coastal, where he opened with two-under 70.
He chased winner Ben van Wyk in the final round, coming up two shots short with a four-under 68.
Jarvis won the SA Boys Under-13 title in at Royal Durban Golf Club in 2015, took the Under-15 Championship at Kingswood Golf Estate early last year and added the Under-17 title to his tally at Middelburg Golf Club in July.
The 2018 champion will return to the Jack Nicklaus signature course with a boat-load of confidence, but Jarvis could have his job cut out with Sam Simpson among his chief challengers.
In a breakthrough season, two-time Sunshine Tour Junior Series winner Simpson kicked off the 2019 season with top 10 finishes in the Africa Amateur Championship, the South African Amateur and the SA Stroke Play Championship and banked his first Open Amateur victory in the Boland Amateur Stroke Play in April.
The Western Province junior topped the Boys Leaderboard as he led the GolfRSA Junior Proteas to victory in the All Africa Junior Golf Challenge in March and that same month, he edged out Jarvis for the Nomads SA Under-19 Stroke Play crown – denying the Ekurhuleni junior a Grand Slam of Nomads SA Boys titles by three shots at Humewood.
The 17-year-old Western Province junior is bringing some undeniably hot form to the title fight at St Francis Links, having upstaged some of the leading juniors in the world to win the Individual Boys Competition in Japan by four shots. The Bellville golfer also went straight into battle last week and posted two solid rounds of 72 to finish ninth overall.
Jarvis and Simpson are undoubtedly the favourites to start, but a number of juniors put their hands up in the recent weeks.
Jordan Wessels from Leopard Park celebrated a national breakthrough with a mature performance at the challenging Gary Player Country Club, where he held off another rising star Michael Ferreira to win the Sun City Under-15 Challenge in a sudden-death play-off.
Pretoria junior Maas was equally impressive as he went wire-to-wire victory at Fancourt to lift the Dimension Data Junior Open title, a victory that catapulted him to second in the Juniors Under-17 rankings.
Other players to watch are Southern Cape’s Jordan Duminy, who finished fourth last week, fellow GolfRSA Naitonal Squad member Yurav Premlall, who reached the match play stage with Duminy in The Amateur Championship and Amilkar Bhana from Gauteng, the reigning Nomads SA Boys Under-15 champion.
Six up-and-coming Australian juniors – Ali Rachid, Tom Addy, Ian Pienaar, Jordan Jung, Jacob Dundas and Eddie Ward – will also feature in the starting line-up of the 140-plus field.
