Aldrich Potgieter (-19) will look to write a new chapter in his brilliant history of precocity tomorrow at the Detroit Golf Club. The 20-year-old South African will start as the sole leader of the Rocket Classic on the PGA Tour after carding a 65 on Saturday, the lowest score of the day in the tournament, to face the final 18 holes with a two-shot lead over his closest pursuers.
The young talent from Pretoria, who began playing golf as a child at the Junior Golf Academy of Louis Oosthuizen in his home country, was one of the two players who set the short-lived course record at Michigan on Thursday with a round of 62, a record surpassed just 24 hours later. After his 70 yesterday, today he has taken advantage of moving day to stake his claim for what would be his first victory on the tour.
Potgieter‘s early successes came in Australia, after his family moved to Perth where he was part of the golf programme at Kingsway Christian College. But his big breakthrough came at the 2022 Amateur Championship, the famous British Amateur, where at 17 he became the second youngest winner in the tournament’s history. A triumph that allowed him to play in the Masters, the Memorial, and the US Open in 2023, after which he decided to turn professional.
In January 2024, he became the youngest winner in the history of the Korn Ferry Tour after winning the Bahamas Great Abaco Classic at 19 years and 133 days old. And in this 2025, he is pursuing, before turning 21 in September, his first trophy on the PGA Tour, a title he came close to in February at the Mexico Open at VidantaWorld, losing the playoff to Brian Cambpell, and which he will attempt to secure tomorrow with the permission of a long list of adversaries.
This Saturday, he completed a flawless round of golf with seven birdies without a mistake. A result that could have been much better because six of his seven birdies came in the first half of the Detroit Golf Club. On the back nine, his putter cooled off, and he missed some opportunities, the most notable on the 18th, where he made a great putt, reading the right-to-left break beautifully, but it just wouldn’t drop.
The Americans Max Greyserman (-17), Mark Hubbard (-17), Andrew Putnam (-17), Chris Kirk (-17), and Jake Knapp (-17), who took the course record from him yesterday with a stunning 61, will try to make things difficult for Potgieter tomorrow. Although the very low scores seen this week at the Rocket Classic open the door to many other players, including his compatriot Thriston Lawrence (-16), Danish Nicolai Hojgaard (-15), and Colin Morikawa (-15), among others.
Considering that this week has seen a 61, two 62s, and a 63, even names like Matt Fitzpatrick (-14) or Davis Thompson (-14), who today became the third player to make three eagles in a single round this season on the PGA Tour (on the par-four 1st, holing out from the fairway, on the par-five 8th, and on the par-four 9th, where he ‘caught’ the green in one from the tee), cannot be ruled out.
