Rowan Lester and Liam Grehan find themselves tied for 15th after the opening round of the Sunshine Tour’s Vodacom Origins of Golf Final at Pezula Golf Estate on the southern coast of South Africa.
Grehan, fresh off his first made cut in nine starts at last week’s Stella Artois Players Championship, started slowly, reeling off six pars before dropping a shot on the 16th – his seventh – to drop the wrong side of par. But that was the only blemish on his card, and he followed it with back-to-back birdies on 17 and 18 to make the turn at -1.
The front side is bookended by par-5s, and he birdied both of those, picking up additional shots on the par-4 fourth and seventh holes, and he signed for a five-under 67 – his lowest competitive round on the circuit since the Zambia Open back in June.
Lester was playing in the group behind, and he shrugged off the disappointment of missing last week’s cut – just his second in his last eight starts – with three birdies and no dropped shots on the way out.
After birdieing the second to get to -4, his only bogey of the day came on three, but he responded with two birdies – including one at the last – in his final six holes and he joined his fellow countryman in the clubhouse at -5.
South African Christiaan Burke shot the lowest round of the day, carding 10 birdies and one bogey in a nine-under-par 63 that gives him a one-stroke lead over fellow Springboks Keenan Davidse and CJ du Plessis, and German Alexander Knappe.
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