Having successfully navigated the pre-qualifier for the co-sanctioned DP World Tour and Sunshine Tour’s SDC Championship, Ireland’s Richie O’Donovan is gearing up for his first start in a DP World Tour event.
It’s a wonderful opportunity for the Lucan native, who knows that a good week could not only lead to the biggest paycheck of his career, but could also go a long way to securing his Sunshine Tour status for the 24/25 season, or better still, be the foundation upon which a push for DP World Tour membership could be built.
But he’s not getting that far ahead of himself. There are a lot of good players entered in the event, including our own Tom McKibbin who’s ranked 24th in the Race to Dubai, recent tournament winners Rikuya Hoshino and Dylan Frittelli and up-and-coming South African Thriston Lawrence.
“I’m looking forward to the week,” O’Donovan said, “actually kind of excited. I’m playing good golf, I’ve been playing really good golf for a long period now but we’ve been playing pre-qualifiers since November and I think I’ve played two full tournaments. That’s just part of the Sunshine Tour – you get a stretch from November to March where its just pre-Qs only, so unless you’re getting into the event, you might not play competitive golf for a couple of weeks.
“I’m playing good and shooting under-par rounds in the pre-Qs, but sometimes three-under isn’t good enough on the day.”
Pre-qualifiers are very much a ‘dog-eat-dog’ world, sometimes with upwards of 70 or 80 really good players all vying for a handful of spots and you have to show up, put your best foot forward and hope that it’s good enough on the day.
And O’Donovan did exactly that this week, birdieing six of his opening 11 holes to put himself in a commanding position and he knew that he had one foot in the tournament. With the toughest stretch on the course coming at the back end of his round, he added another birdie and then played to the fat part of the greens on the way in, eventually signing for a bogey-free, seven-under 65 that saw him finish joint first and book himself a tee-time alongside McKibbin and co. on Thursday.
“Once I got to six under through 11, I knew I didn’t have to push for more birdies,” he said, “just keep myself in play and don’t make any mental errors and once I do that, I’ll give myself chances for birdies on the greens and I managed to do that.”
Having played a number of seasons on the Sunshine Tour, he is familiar with the St. Francis’ Links Course that is set to play host this week, and he’s played it several times in competition.
“It’s an hour-and-a-half drive from here,” he said having finished the qualifier in Port Elizabeth, adjacent to where the Challenge Tour event was held last week, “a little bit down the coast. It’s in a coastal town but not on the coast exactly, but though it’s called St. Francis Links, it doesn’t really play like a links.
“We’ve played multiple events here, so I know exactly where to go. It’s a course I know well. Being a DP World Tour event – and I obviously play on the Sunshine Tour – this is one of the bigger events for me so it’s nice to get into it and be on the draw sheet.”
A top 10 finish would mean automatic entry to next week’s Johnsson Workwear Open, the final event in South Africa, but given the quality in the field, he knows that’s a huge ask and realistically expects that he’ll have to undergo another pre-qualifier if he’s to get into the field there.
“That would be sick,” he said with a chuckle, “that’d mean I wouldn’t have to go pre-qualify, but that’s just getting ahead of yourself.”
A much more realistic goal is accumulating enough points this week to wrap up his Sunshine Tour card for next season, with just two regular season events remaining following the Johnsson Workwear Open. O’Donovan has some catching up to do having opted to skip the majority of the first half of the season as he’d returned to Ireland and intended to have a run at DP World Tour Q-School.
“When I got my card [through Sunshine Tour Q-School last year], I skipped the first nine events because I was playing well at the time and thought I may as well try DP World Tour Q-School, and I was thinking that I’d only come out here and try to pre-qualify for the co-sanctioned events,” he explained. “Then I kind of got the bug and thought I’d come over and play some golf so I came over a month earlier than I’d planned and I got off to a decent start and finished eighth in my first event. But I only got about six events in and then it was into pre-qualifiers, so my original plan was always to just back myself for the second half of the season.
“So if I finish well and keep my card, I’ll probably go again [next year] because I am playing really good golf, but it’s still tough. If you shoot three under every day in a four-round event, that’s 12-under and it’s a really good score. But three-under doesn’t get through pre-qualifiers because there’s only 10 places, so I just need to get into the events so I can get a good run at it. Having one round to shoot five or six-under-par is really tough, whereas if you’re in the event and you shoot three rounds of three-under and then one round of six-under, you’re going to have a really good week.
“So now that I’m in, I want to have a good week, move myself up the Order of Merit. Get into next week, move myself up the Order of Merit further and then play well in the last two events. So I need to play good golf for the next month, but I am playing good golf right now.”
The first part of the job is done, the second part is playing 36 holes of good golf at St. Francis’ Links on Thursday and Friday, then continuing the trend over the weekend. And if he keeps doing what he’s doing, the rest will take care of itself.
And it’s most welcome to have a second home player to support on a year where Irish representation has been extremely scarce on the DP World Tour.
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