Last-gasp birdie sees JC Ritchie successfully defend Cape Town Open title

Cape Town — It took a dramatic 25-footer for birdie on the 18th hole, but JC Ritchie was up to it as he drained the putt to grab a last gasp victory in a successful defence of his title in the Sunshine Tour’s Bain’s Whisky Cape Town Open.

It’s a hole on which Ritchie has history, after he birdied it last year to get into a play-off and birdied it again to win the play-off. After he had dropped two shots on the 13th and 14th at Royal Cape Golf Club, he needed a strong finish once again if he was going to pull a rabbit out of the hat and win after he had looked to be cruising home with a two-stroke lead with six holes to play.

“It was nice for the first time in a while to actually have a putt to win outright and not just to get in a play-off, and to seize the opportunity is amazing,” said Ritchie afterwards of a triumph that came in an event co-sanctioned by the Challenge Tour.

That putt gave him a closing four-under-par 68 and took him one clear of German Christopher Mivis, who was watching anxiously from the sidelines after finished a few minutes earlier with a six-under-par 66 to move to 17-under.

Ritchie had moved into a two-stroke lead on the ninth where he made birdie and Spaniard Ivan Cantero Gutierrez had made bogey, and overnight leader Tom McKibbin of Northern Ireland was battling on his way to a one-over 37 on the front nine. Inexplicably, after neat enough pars on 10 and 11, Ritchie started to look unsettled, and his normal accuracy off the tee evaporated from the 12th hole. It was no surprise when he dropped shots on 13 and 14 as he paid the price for being out of position.

But he got things on a more even keel with a par on the deceptively difficult 15th, and then he pulled the first of a couple of aces he