THE final round of the South African Airways Open championship, held at the Pearl Valley Golf Estates in Paarl, came under threat by unusual wet weather on Sunday as play was delayed for almost three and a half hours.
Persistent rain saturated the grounds to the extent where players were unable to continue, forcing them to wait for conditions to clear up.
Although the weather didn’t get much better, play was restarted eventually with the championship still wide open.
At that point England’s Oliver Wilson had a one-stroke lead over South African James Kingston, although neither of them were under any real threat from the star-studded group of players chasing them and the title.
The pressure mounted as the championship was decided on the final whole.
The 42-year-old Kingston (284 - 73 69 71 71) managed to weather the proverbial storm to finish one stroke ahead of Wilson (285 - 76 69 67 73) to take his first SAA Open championship title. Fellow South Africans Louis Oosthuizen (287 - 78 72 66 71) and Garth Mulroy (287 - 80 70 64 73) finished in fifth and sixth place respectively while former champions Ernie Els (293 - 77 70 77 69) and Retief Goosen (293 - 74 74 70 75) struggled to keep up with the front-runners.
