On the fairway

After our performance against England, we were quite excited about facing the twice defending champions. While we struggled to break par, all three South Africans posted sub-par scores and that pretty much sums it all.

After getting the better of world number five Lee Westwood yesterday, I was looking forward to meeting number six Ernie Els. I played a solid round to shoot 72, but Ernie was just too good and never gave me a chance. I still had a chance, but the par-4 13th took the match out of my reach when I made a bogey while Ernie birdied the hole.

I decided to go for an all-out attack and was rewarded with birdies on the 14th and 16th. The Road Hole gave a bogey to both of us and it was all over. Vijay Kumar, despite making hissecond successive eagle on the par-5 3rd, never got going against a rampant Retief Goosen and lost 75-67 while the birdies deserted Jyoti Randhawa and he lost 74-68 to David Frost.

South Africa have a very good chance of making it a hat-trick of titles and the fact that all three players have very good experience of playing in Europe, brightens their chances further. The other team to watch out for is Spain with Sergio Garcia, Miguel Angel Jimenez and Masters winner Jose Maria Olazabal.

The biggest upset of the day came when Italy, with only one player in the top 200 of world rankings, whitewashed top seeds and favourites United States. None of the Americans (Mark O’ Meara, Payne Stewart and Tom Lehman) broke par and lost 3-0. New Zealand beat Sweden 2-1, while Japan defeated Scotland by the same margin.

On Saturday, we play China. I would have liked to play their number one player Zhang Lian-wei, but he picked up Jyoti instead. I will be playing Cheng Jun, who is a steady player and winner of the VolvoMasters on the Asian PGA Tour a couple of years back. This is our best chance to win a tie and we are going all out for it.

— Tiger Sports