TC looks for a slice of luck

SWAKOPMUND – Zimbabwe’s TC Charamba won on the fourth hole of a playoff in last year’s MTC Namibia PGA Championship and he’s hoping that the relocation of the 2009 event to Rossmund Golf Club from Windhoek Country Club will help him in his title defence starting today.

He’s had three top 10s on the 2009 Sunshine Tour (a share of second in May’s Samsung Royal Swazi Sun Open, a share of third in August’s Suncoast Classic and sole possession of second later that month in the Telkom PGA Pro-Am in Centurion), but he missed three cuts in a row in October.’I’m hitting the ball well, and things are going alright, but I’m not making the scores,’ he said ahead of his departure for Namibia.He warded off Merrick Bremner and Nic Henning in that playoff as the storm clouds rolled in over Windhoek, but he will be defending the title on one of five registered all-grass 18-hole desert golf courses in the world.’I don’t know the course, but I can’t wait to tee it up there,’ said Charamba. ‘I just need a few things to go my way.’There will be some heavy-hitters from the 2009 Sunshine Tour missing from Namibia: Jaco Ahlers, Louis de Jager, Darren Fichardt, Trevor Fisher Jnr, Peter Karmis, Jbe’ Kruger and Jaco van Zyl have won 11 times between them on the tour this year and are all not playing in Namibia.De Jager, Fisher and Van Zyl are all playing in the second stage of the European Tour School which begins on November 20, while the others have withdrawn from the tournament for a variety of reasons.But Bremner and Henning will both be there, and will both want to atone for missing out last year.When he won last year, it was Charamba’s second title on the Sunshine Tour.He thinks it’s time for a third.Tich Moore had eight top 10 finishes this year, but it’s two years since he won on the Sunshine Tour, and he’ll be hoping to rectify that this week.He came agonisingly close in his last tournament: A double-bogey on the 16th of the Platinum Classic two weeks ago cost him the lead and he went down by one shot to Darren Fichardt.But that’s unlikely to stop him playing the way he knows best. He’s a long hitter off the tee, and that puts him in position to fire for the pins on his approaches. So he will go for it like he did on the 16th at Mooinooi, and, well, if he flies over the green when he catches a flyer, that’s sport.His rounds of 65, 68 and 69 in the last tournament show he’s in the kind of form that can get him his eighth win on the Sunshine Tour.He shared fourth in last year’s MTC Namibia PGA Championship, one shot out of the playoff won by TC Charamba from Nic Henning and Merrick Bremner. So it’s a tournament he likes, and, like all the players, will be relishing the opportunity to try out the desert layout.If Moore is to look back to the Platinum Classic, he needs to keep an eye on players like Warren Abery, who finished in a share of 11th then, and on Doug McGuigan, who was also in 11th and has won on the Sunshine Tour this year.Grant Muller and Alan McLean shared third at Mooinooi, and they, too will be in Namibia, each looking for a victory which seemed so possible for both of them two weeks ago.There are others, of course, but if Moore is out to prove a point, he may be awfully difficult to rein in if he gets away.- Sunshine Tour