De Jonge slips into dangerous waters

Sport
Zimbabwe’s top golfer Brendon de Jonge is slipping down the PGA rankings and is now 83rd in the world, having at one time reached a career high 58th.

Zimbabwe’s top golfer Brendon de Jonge is slipping down the PGA rankings and is now 83rd in the world, having at one time reached a career high 58th.

By Michael Kariati

Although he has moved one place up from 84th to 83rd since the last time the rankings were updated, De Jonge is slowly slipping down towards very dangerous playing grounds.

This is because participation in major events on the PGA Tour is determined by one’s world ranking and a place out of the top 100 would have serious repercussions for de Jonge in future.

Some of the competitions attract only the top 100, others the top 60 and some the top 30 and those outside the top 100 usually go through the qualifying process and the Zimbabwean would not like to be in that unfamiliar territory.

De Jonge showed promise when at one time he was placed 70th but has not been consistent enough over the past few months. With better consistency, de Jonge should by now have broken into the top 50. The Zimbabwean finished tied for 13th at his last event the Australian Open that came on week 50th of the PGA Tour. This was after a tied 38th at the Emirates Open in week 48 and a 15th placing at the Turkish Airlines in week 46.

This has seen his total points tally reach 92,26 points for an average of 1,77 points from 50 events.

De Jonge, however, is way ahead of some of world’s renowned golfers. Robert Streb of the USA who won the McGladrey Classic is in 91st place, Stuart Appleby of Australia is placed 127th, Eric Compton of the USA (95), and Richard Sterner of South Africa is on 87th.

The Official World Golf Rankings, which are endorsed by the four major championships and the five professional tours which make up the International Federation of PGA Tours, are issued weekly, following completion of the previous week’s tournaments from around the world.

The statistic is the average number of points earned per event in the last 104 weeks. These points are awarded based on finishing position as well as the strength of the field.

De Jonge’s best placing so far was a second place at the McGladrey Classic which left him among the top 10 earners of the newly started 2015 season with a total of US$620 262 from four events. De Jonge is placed ninth among the leading money earners so far.

In the just ended 2014 season, the Zimbabwean amassed a total US$1 171 396 which has seen his career earnings balloon to US$10 045 326.

South Africa’s Charl Schwartzel is at the moment the highest placed African golfer at 32nd in the world with the likes of Louis Oosthuizen (44th) Ernie Else (61), and Tim Clark (62) closely behind.

Rory Mclroy of Northern Ireland remains the world’s top ranked golfer followed by Henrik Stenson of Sweden, Adam Scott of Australia and Bubba Watson of the USA in that order. Former world number one Tiger Woods has slipped to 29th.

Mclroy who is at the summit of the table with a total points tally of 555,93 has averaged 11,35 points in the 49 events he has taken part in so far.

Zimbabwe has had a world number one on the PGA Tour in the form of Nick Price who was the planet’s top golfer for 53 weeks between 1993 and 1994, and during the same period won the Zimbabwe Sportsperson of the Year accolade.

Although De Jonge is way off the world’s top ranking, he also won the Zimbabwe Sportsperson of the Year in 2012 after a good run on the PGA Tour.

He is the only Zimbabwean that directly qualifies to play in that highly competitive PGA Tour programme.

The other Zimbabwean in the world top 1 000 is Ryan Cairns who is placed at 963 on the globe.