JC Ritchie may have not won back-to-back Sunshine Tour titles but he continues to lead the race to finish on top of the Sunshine Tour Order of Merit.
READ: Higgo’s 67 not enough at Royal Cape
Ritchie was well poised in Cape Town to follow his Limpopo Championship triumph with a win at Royal Cape Golf Club, but weekend rounds of 70 – and then 77 when the wind returned – cost him any serious chance.
The stocky 25-year-old still managed to bank R43,535 which moved his season’s earnings to R1,996,187. He maintained his lead at the top of the Challenge Tour’s Race to Mallorca with last week’s runner-up Wilco Nienaber third and this week’s runner-up Garrick Higgo fourth. Jacques Kruyswijk and Hennie du Plessis also sit inside the top 10 with 23 events to play. The top 20 at the end of the season will earn European Tour cards.
Crucial to the local picture was third-placed Daniel van Tonder, who saw his chances of lifting the second of the Challenge Tour stop’s trophies blown away by a final-round 78.
Van Tonder, though, banked R83,812 and in the process moved ahead of Jaco Ahlers as the main threat to Ritchie’s position at the top. He stands on R1,853,893 ahead of this week’s stop at Fancourt for the DiData Pro-Am.
Ahlers, not playing in the Tour Championship, sits third on R1,851,795.
