Liam Nolan’s impressive start to 2025 continued in the HotelPlanner Tour’s Cell C Cape Town Open in South Africa as he carded an excellent three-under-par 69 at Royal Cape Golf Club, leaving him one shot off the lead at the midpoint on day one.
With strong winds gusting through the Cape of Good Hope region, it was easy to see why it had once been known as the Cape of Storms, and danger lurked on every hole of the tight layout.
With a third place and a tie for fourth in his first two events, the Galway man is already in bonus territory as he wouldn’t otherwise have been in the Cape Town field, but he needs another top five finish to gain access to next week’s NTT DATA Pro-Am and tee it up in all four of the season-opening South African events.
But that was far from his mind as he began his round on the 10th and parred the opening three before dropping a shot on the par-3 13th. He regrouped to card another two pars before opening his birdie account on 16 and then got into red figures at the turn with a timely birdie on the par-4 18th.
He started the front side as he’d finished the back, carding another ‘three’ to get to -2, and he kept his scorecard clean on the front, adding another birdie on the par-5 seventh hole to move to -3 and just one shot off the early pace though the leading score would shortly be extended to -5.
“Yeah, very happy again,” he said after his round. “I played some lovely golf today in tough conditions. It’s a tight golf course with a lot of wind, so just kept plugging away trying to make as many pars as possible and hopefully get a few putts to drop and they they did today.”
Growing up close to the west coast in Ireland, he’s no stranger to windy conditions, which came in handy as the blustery gusts swept through the tree-lined avenues of Cape Royal Golf Club.
“It’s a bit more playing like at home out there now,” he explained. “It’s just keep the ball flight as close to the ground as you can and yeah, just don’t really let let the ball up and take your time, especially in the wind if it picks up, you know.”
He’s riding a hot hand at present, but the courses he’s encountered in weeks one and two were quite different and now Cape Royal is offering a different challenge again, but the basic tenets of the game remain the same and he feels that low scores are attainable.
“Yeah, it’s so different,” he replied when asked about the change from week-to-week. “All the three courses we’ve played out here have been so, so different, but yeah, I mean, if you hit it straight and you’re tidy around the greens out here, it’s a gettable course for sure.”
Having only turned pro in the latter half of 2024, and with Alps Tour status and a handful of HotelPlanner Tour – the rebranded Challenge Tour – starts to rely on, he’s already put himself in the frame for promotion to the DP World Tour but admits that he hadn’t put a heavy weight of expectation on his game coming into the season.
“I felt confident, but I had no massive ambition,” he said, “like no massive expectation on shoulders coming into the weeks, just, you know, first couple of tournaments of the year, see how you play, see if there’s anything you need to work on, kind of fix it quickly early in season.
“But yeah, I’ve been really enjoying playing really nicely and hopefully it continues.”
The HotelPlanner Tour will see a reshuffle in the exemption categories later in the year, so for now, he remains well down the order despite sitting in second place in the Road to Mallorca rankings, and is not currently exempt into next week’s event. It was the same story last week and he played his way in, but that is far from his mind after completing just 18 of the 72 holes.
“Certainly not yet,” he conceded, “maybe coming down the last two holes on Sunday if I’m in that position, but, yeah, I’m just going to try and keep as close to the top of the leaderboard as I can for the first three days and see where I’m sitting on Sunday.”
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