– This Sunday at the Joburg Open saw chapter number 432 of how hard it is to win a golf tournament. It was an elimination race in which the last man standing prevailed. Honour and happiness for the English Dan Bradbury (-17). It is his third victory on the DP World Tour and his second at the Joburg Open. There is a romance. He won it in 2022, at a different course, playing with a sponsor’s invitation and in his third ever tournament on the circuit. It launched his career. Now it gives him two years of breathing space, we’ll see if as much as the two previous times he won (Joburg Open 2022 and Open de Francia 2024). To date he has shown himself to be a player with as much quality as a knack for nodding off.
– It was a lovely Sunday, very exciting and at the same time agonising at the Houghton Golf Club. Lovely because, finally, the weather behaved, play went ahead without scares, even with sunshine, and a wind blew strong enough to make life difficult for the players. It was exciting because up to four different players had chances to win in the last five holes of the tournament. That does not happen very often. And agonising because Hennie du Plessis (-14) and Brandon Robinson Thompson (-16), two who have never won in their careers, had victory in their hands and let it slip.
– The reality was that the final round of the Joburg Open looked set to be a march for Du Plessis. The South African, who had been third and second in the last two weeks, went out determined to open his account on the DP World Tour. He started with three birdies in the first five holes, put daylight between him and the field and closed the first nine with another birdie. It seemed his hour had come. He reached a four-shot lead and almost never dropped below three… until the debacle arrived.
– He recorded a first bogey at the 12th that barely hurt, it was part of the script. It could happen and he could afford it. The problem came at 15. He missed the tee shot into the rough and was left with a very tense second shot. In line with the flag there was water short and if he went long a penalty area. He was forced to be very precise from the rough… or forget the flag. He chose the former, it came off as a flyer and finished in the jungle long of the green. He saved a miraculous bogey, but on the next hole he went into the water off the tee. He came up very short. Club selection error. In no time he went from -18 to -14. Eliminated.
– Brandon Robinson Thompson took over. He holed an extraordinary birdie at the 14th, with a ripping shot, and moved to -18. He had just become leader and the problems arrived. How hard it is to win in golf. He made bogey at 15, a nasty and tricky hole, but ruined his chances with a final bogey at 18, after a cruel three-putt. He hit the first putt too hard and missed the comeback putt from less than two metres without the ball touching the hole. Eliminated.
– Amid the chaos the imposing figure of Casey Jarvis emerged, seeking a third consecutive victory on the DP World Tour and thus to equal something only Seve Ballesteros and Nick Faldo had done. His attack was fantastic, with four birdies between holes 9 and 14, but again, when he was almost home, he stumbled. He made bogey at 17, with a second shot that was too aggressive, and missed a birdie putt on 18 of about two metres that would have taken him to a playoff. Eliminated.
– So it was Bradbury, who had mostly flown under the radar all day, who took the win. First with a sensational birdie at 17. He executed a superb second shot, half a club, left it a little over two metres from the flag and holed the putt. Then, on 18 he also suffered. Knowing that par would be enough to win, he missed the green from the middle of the fairway. That said, his approach from the rough was a delicacy. He left it set up. It was the ray of light amid so much gloom.
An up and down was needed on the 18th green to seal his third DP World Tour title and his second Joburg Open title…
Dan Bradbury stepped up and did this 👇#JoburgOpen pic.twitter.com/FGwOyxnVpB
— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) March 8, 2026
– The Joburg Open has once again proved an elusive tournament for the Spaniards. It wasn’t as bad as on other occasions, but without any chances of victory. Jorge Campillo, Ángel Ayora and Sebas García finished tied in 18th place at -7 with rounds of 68, 68 and 67, respectively. This result allows Ayora to move up one place in the Race to Dubai to 15th, while Campillo rises to 36th and Sebas gets some breathing room to climb to 102nd. Sunday was worse for Alex del Rey (-1), Iván Cantero (+1) and Ángel Hidalgo (+3). The three finished at the back of the leaderboard.
– The DP World Tour rests next week and returns, in theory, in two weeks with the Volvo China Open. The winner of the International Swing, which concluded with the Joburg Open, was Patrick Reed. The American remains leader of the Race to Dubai, followed by Schaper and Jarvis. Bradbury has moved into fourth
