Pablo Ereño was on the brink of his first victory in the HotelPlanner Tour. The Madrid native came close to touching it with his fingertips at the Jonsson Workwear Durban Open. With two holes left to finish the tournament, he was tied for first place with Oliver Bekker, who was coincidentally his playing partner this Sunday. However, a disastrous 17th hole knocked him out of contention with a devastating quadruple bogey. Nevertheless, he managed to recover and finish with a birdie to secure third place. The victory went to the veteran Oliver Bekker, his second career win on this tour.
Ereño is getting closer every day to his first professional victory. Literally. Today, in fact, he almost achieved it. He started Sunday at the Durban Country Club in the third-to-last group of the day. The leaderboard was very tight, and he needed to play very well to stand out among so many strong competitors. And he did…
Pablo started with two pars and then made his first birdie on the 3rd hole. He made two more on the 5th and 6th, and not even a bogey on the 7th slowed his momentum. On the contrary, he made another birdie on the 8th and seriously put himself in contention for the win. He was at -14, three strokes behind Sweden’s Christopher Blomstrand (-17), the dominant player of the first nine holes in South Africa.
Blomstrand, in fact, managed to pull away from the pack and seemed destined to take the win. However, a double bogey on the 12th and another bogey on the 16th caused him to lose ground and opened the door for the other players. Ereño took advantage of this. Two birdies on the 14th and 16th put him at -16, leading the tournament, tied with Bekker and two strokes ahead of his closest rivals. They were the ones playing the best.
The tournament was going to be decided in a head-to-head between the two playing together. This led to the fateful 17th hole, a long par 4 that played over par today. Bekker stumbled with a bogey, but Ereño’s fall was even more severe. A quadruple bogey left him three strokes behind his playing partner with only one hole remaining. Suddenly, he went from first place in the standings to eighth. Devastating.
However, far from licking his wounds, Ereño managed to finish with a very valuable birdie. It’s the difference between being tied for third or eighth. Night and day in terms of prize money and, above all, points for the Road to Mallorca. A birdie of great value considering where he came from.
Bekker also finished with a birdie on the 18th for a total of -16. He won by two strokes over Blomstrand and three over Ereño, Luke Brown, Calum Fyfe, Pedro Figueiredo, Julián Perico, and John Gough. It’s Bekker’s second victory following the Dimension Data Pro Am in 2023. The 41-year-old South African veteran still hopes to rejoin the DP World Tour, although his victory in Durban came without being a member of the European circuit. We’ll see if he changes his mind. Remember, he has played some LIV Golf tournaments as a reserve in recent years.
Ereño’s third place is valuable in terms of the Road to Mallorca. In fact, he made a significant leap to rank seventh. The balance of this first series of HotelPlanner Tour tournaments in South Africa must be very positive for the golfer trained at UCLA. Remember, he doesn’t have a card for this tour and has played three tournaments by invitation and one more for being in the top 5. With this second top 5, he also saves the invitation for the next tournament, which will be held in India in March.
Ereño is just ahead of Santi Tarrio (-12) in the Road to Mallorca. The Galician had a bitter end to the tournament. He started as a co-leader in this third and final round (the tournament was reduced to 54 holes due to bad weather), but finished ninth with a final round of 73 strokes, with four bogeys and three birdies. Despite the bitter aftertaste, it’s important to value being placed in the eighth spot in the order of merit after this start to the season.
