Louis Oosthuizen (-17) didn’t have to do much this Sunday to win the AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open. The most important thing was to realise in time that he did have to do something to win the tournament. Not much, but something.
The South African has achieved his second consecutive victory after winning last Monday at the Alfred Dunhill Championship. Funny how things go. He had gone five years without winning a tournament and now he has won two in six days. That’s how moods, form and confidence work.
Oosthuizen looked around this morning before going out to play and thought that the tournament was going to fall into his lap. It’s a reasonable approach, since his direct rivals were somewhat lacking in winning experience, and a second place, or even a top 5, would taste like heaven to them.
The problem is that in golf, letting yourself be carried to the finish line is usually not a good thing. Oosthuizen started playing poorly, with two bogeys on holes 4 and 5 and, suddenly, he stopped being the leader and put some more in the fight, like Sebastian Soderberg (-14), who was marching far ahead making birdies like a madman to erase his crash from yesterday (77 strokes). The Swede would have been a fiercer rival for Oosthuizen. The ‘guest’ De Villiers dreamed of victory and Canter had enough not to think too much about victory so as not to stir up ghosts.
After the first third of the last round, it seemed that the AfrAsia was going to have an exciting finish, but in the end it wasn’t. When the chips were seriously being distributed, Oosthuizen showed that today he is much more of a player than De Villiers or Canter. He hit the best shots, got into fewer problems and ended up winning the tournament without needing to shift into fifth gear.
Canter started to tremble around the greens and with the putter and De Villiers started to miss shots, especially from the tee. That’s when a key moment came. It was on the 15th, par 5. Oosthuizen played it by the book to get the birdie, with an exceptional third shot, and De Villiers made a bogey that was not on any roadmap to suddenly find himself two strokes behind. He made another bogey on the 17th, when the tournament was being decided, and allowed Oosthuizen to play the 18th with his elbow out the window and smoking a cigar. Final victory with a two-stroke lead over Canter (-15), who was unable to make a birdie in the last five holes, and three over De Villiers, Daniel Brown and Soderberg.
Oosthuizen wins for the second time in six days and prevails on a co-designed course by him. This is the reason why he decided to play in Mauritius. Now, his next challenge will be to win at LIV Golf, something he has not yet been able to achieve.
