The HotelPlanner Tour continues its season-opening tour with its third consecutive event in South Africa. This Thursday, the Cell C Cape Town Open in association with Honor kicks off in Cape Town.
Undoubtedly, Daniel Van Tonder is the main protagonist of the week and is in the spotlight. The South African has been crowned champion of the first two events of the year and is already on track for his return to the DP World Tour. The buffalo wants to return in grand style and as soon as possible. A third victory would give him a passport back to the European Tour just two months after losing his card.
Van Tonder has a string of records within reach this week. Of course, he would be the first player in history to win the first three tournaments of the year in the second division of the European Tour, but it’s much more than that. He has a double challenge ahead.
Since the rule of three victories granting direct promotion was implemented in 2008, no one has achieved it before June. Eleven players over these 17 years have managed to lift at least three trophies in a single season. The earliest was a very young Brooks Koepka back in 2013. The American achieved his third victory on 23 June of that year. He needed ten tournaments to do it. It’s barely the start of February, and Van Tonder has four and a half months to shatter the record of the five-time Major winner.
Although Koepka is the player who achieved the hat-trick the earliest, there is another player who holds the record for achieving it in the fewest tournaments played. The Swede Kristoffer Broberg in 2012, a year before Brooks, was the player who needed to play the fewest tournaments to achieve this lucrative goal, as that year he achieved the three wins in just five tournaments, although the third of them came on 23 August. After two victories in the Nordic League, he secured four in the Challenge Tour. A crazy year.
Daniel Van Tonder, therefore, has a huge challenge this week. Winning the first three tournaments of the year and claiming the records of Koepka and Broberg in one fell swoop.
Winning is never easy, doing it for the third consecutive week is sheer madness, but Van Tonder has shown that he is in an excellent moment and is currently touched by a magic wand. Seven Spaniards will be in the field at Royal Cape Golf Club and will try to prevent the feat of the 33-year-old player: Santiago Tarrío, Adri Arnaus, Sebastián Garcia, Borja Virto, Lucas Vacarisas, and Víctor Pastor.
