Ding and Smith share first round Joburg Open lead

Wenyi Ding and Jordan Smith led a morning charge to share the first-round lead of the Joburg Open at a wet Houghton on Thursday.

The Chinese golfer and the Englishman carded seven-under-par 63 for a one-stroke lead over five rivals, including Jayden Schaper, the only South African in the top seven.

A further nine were on five under after an opening day on which more than 70 went around below par.

Newly crowned SA Open champion Dylan Naidoo shot a level-par 70 and 2022 champion, Dan Bradbury of England, 71.

Many of the top-placed players teed off in the morning, when conditions were at their wettest after the heavy rains that drenched Johannesburg through Wednesday afternoon and evening.

Jacob Olesen of Denmark, who fired 65, had not expected to start on time.

“Last night when we had dinner, it was pouring down. I said to my caddie, ‘we’re gonna wake up at 4.45am, but we ain’t gonna be playing'.”

And his scepticism hadn’t eased by the time he started playing — on time. “I was honestly, at the start, a little sceptical about playing. I hit a drive on hole three that was just inside the edge of the fairway and it took us maybe two-and-a-half minutes to find the ball because it plugged that bad.”

Schaper, who started his round with an eagle on the par-five 10th, had similar experiences. “I had so many plugged lies on the fairways today ... the third, the fourth, the fifth ... I mean the whole golf course is quite wet.”

But the players managed themselves well.

“You can’t really force anything out there — that’s my strategy — you have to play smart around here,” said Nicolai von Dellingshausen of Germany after his 64.

“You know, get the balls in play, get it on the fairways, have the preferred lies, take advantage of that, and then get it close instead of hitting drivers and then ending up in the rough with thick mud on the ball.

“Then you don’t have any chance of getting it anywhere from there.”

But co-leader Smith, happy to be back in action after a few weeks on the sidelines because of injury, had a different approach.

“I think it was just taking advantage of hitting the driver on a few holes, getting a bit further down there and then hitting the wedge shots closer and trying to manage the spin because obviously with them being so soft, you really have to sort of judge it perfectly.”

He agreed that players had different options on the layout. 

“It’s very tree-lined in places, very narrow. There are a lot of short holes so you can either hit driver and go for it or layback and hit iron off tee and wedge it in.

“So yeah, there’s a lot of different options on holes, but for me, I tend to get the driver and go for it.”

One thing the golfers agreed on was the tremendous effort of the green-keeping staff to ensure the course was playable less than 12 hours after the deluge.