JOHANNESBURG – Haydn Porteous kept his nerve to go bogey-free through the final round Sunday and win the Joburg Open by two shots for his first European Tour title.

The South African finished with a 3-under 69 for an 18-under total of 269 at Royal Johannesburg and Kensington Golf Club. He pushed clear of a three-way tie for the lead overnight for his breakthrough win.

Zander Lombard, one of the men to share the lead with Porteous, finished second after a 71, which included four birdies but also three bogeys.

The third co-leader, Anthony Wall of England, was in a four-way tie for third after a 72. Wall had been searching for his first tour title in 16 years only to fail to pick up any shots on his closing nine. He finished three behind Porteous and alongside Bjorn Akesson, Justin Walters and American Daniel Im.

The additional reward for Porteous, Lombard and Wall were places at this year’s British Open at Royal Troon.

Victory came after the 21-year-old Porteous missed the cut at both previous European Tour events he’d played this season. His measured finish included birdies on the par-5 No. 8, on No. 14 and at No. 18 to make sure.

Porteous became the second first-time winner on the tour’s South African swing after 22-year-old Brandon Stone won last weekend’s South African Open.

Wall had a chance at just a second European Tour win – and his first since 2000 – after reasonable progress on the front nine with two birdies and a bogey. But he slipped up with a bogey on No. 10 and wasn’t able to climb back into contention, finishing with eight straight pars.

Having missed the cut last week, Ernie Els ended the Joburg Open with another disappointing round, a 74 this time for 5 under overall and in a tie for 44th.

HONOLULU – Même après avoir raté un oiselet de deux pieds au dernier trou, ce ne fut pas difficile pour Zac Blair de voir le positif, samedi, à l’Omnium Sony.

Blair a effectué trois roulés sur la dernière normale-5 à Waialae et a dû se contenter d’une carte de 64, six coups sous la normale, ce qui lui a procuré une égalité en tête avec Brandt Snedeker. Blair est en quête d’une première victoire sur le circuit de la PGA.

Snedeker a raté des roulés pour l’oiselet sur les deux derniers trous pour jouer 66. Ils étaient à moins-16, et ils ont encore beaucoup de compagnie au haut du classement.

Kevin Kisner a commis son seul boguey de la ronde après que son coup de fer se soit retrouvé derrière les tentes corporatives au 17e trou. Il s’est bien repris avec un oiselet au 18e pour jouer 66 et il accuse maintenant un coup de retard sur les meneurs.

Le Canadien Graham DeLaet est à égalité au 13e échelon à moins-10 tandis que son compatriote Nick Taylor occupe le 52e rang à moins-6. Adam Hadwin, de Moose Jaw en Saskatchewan, est 68e à moins-4 et David Hearn, de Brampton en Ontario, est à moins-3 et n’a pas pu terminer la ronde.

HONOLULU – Zac Blair missed a 2-foot birdie putt on his final hole Saturday and had to settle for a share of the lead with Brandt Snedeker.

Blair drilled a 3-wood into the par-5 closing hole at Waialae to just over 40 feet, lagged it short and pulled the short birdie. He still had a 6-under 64 and will have a good shot at his first PGA Tour victory.

Snedeker missed birdie putts of 10 feet and 12 feet on the last two holes for a 66.

They were at 16-under 194.

Kevin Kisner birdied his last hole for a 66 and was one shot behind. He will be in the final group for the third time in his last four PGA Tour events.

Canada’s Graham DeLaet is tied for 13th at 10-under 200.

SEBRING, Fla. – Young Pro Squad member Corey Conners fired a 2-under 70 to earn medallist honours in Saturday’s rain-delayed final of PGA Tour Lationamérica Qualifying School at the Sun ‘N Lake Golf Course.

Conners, a Listowel, Ont., product, finished at 10-under (74-67-67-70) for a two-stroke victory over a trio of Americans at 8-under par. With the win, the 24-year-old Kent State graduate earns fully exempt status on tour.

Heading into the 2016 season, Conners will split events between the PGA Tour Latinoamérica and the Mackenzie Tour-PGA Tour Canada.

Click here for full scoring.

JOHANNESBURG – Anthony Wall has a chance at his second European Tour title and first in 16 years when he heads into the final round of the Joburg Open as part of a three-way tie for the lead.

England’s Wall and South Africans Zander Lombard and Haydn Porteous were on 15-under-par 200 on Saturday after three rounds at Royal Johannesburg and Kensington Golf Club.

Wall, trying to add to his Alfred Dunhill Championship victory in 2000, had four birdies in a 68. Lomard had one of the rounds of the day with his 65, while Porteous matched Wall’s 68.

The trio leads by two from a group of four players: Overnight leader Ross McGowan, who slipped off the top with a 1-over 73, Jacques Blaauw, Paul Dunne, and American Daniel Im.

HONOLULU – A new driver, a new swing and Brandt Snedeker is starting to feel just like new.

Coming off a great weekend at Kapalua, Snedeker played bogey-free Friday and rolled in a couple of long birdie putts that carried him to a 5-under 65 and a one-shot lead over Kevin Kisner after two rounds of the Sony Open.

Snedeker was at 12-under 128.

“I feel like I’m playing great, so it should be fun,” Snedeker said about the weekend at Waialae.

It could be fun for a lot of players.

Two dozen players were separated by five shots at the halfway point. Scoring conditions were so ideal that 87 players from the 144-man field made the cut, meaning there will be a 54-hole cut on Saturday.

Kisner, who played with Snedeker, kept pace with him on Thursday (both opened at 63) and on Friday until a two-shot swing on their 12th hole. Snedeker made a 35-foot birdie putt and Kisner missed a 5-footer for par. Kiser kept his wits even as his putts kept missing. Even though he missed three birdie chances inside 10 feet and had several others in the 15-foot range that caught part of the cup, he hung in there long enough to make a 12-foot eagle putt on his last hole for a 66.

British Open champion Zach Johnson (66) and the resurgent Luke Donald (65) were among those two shots behind, while the group three strokes back included Sean O’Hair and 49-year-old Jerry Kelly. Vijay Singh, who turns 53 next month and can become the PGA Tour’s oldest winner, had a 69 and was four behind.

Dating to his final two rounds on Maui – 65-67 to tie for third – Snedeker is 26 under over his last 72 holes. That beats the way he finished the up last year. He went to the Australian PGA Championship and opened with an 84.

He made a full commitment to an overhaul of his setup, and Snedeker said he worked hard with Butch Harmon and then showed up in Maui early, playing a couple of practice rounds with Jordan Spieth. And it helped that Kapalua’s fairways are among the widest in golf.

“Maui being wide open off the tee a little bit helped me get comfortable with it,” Snedeker said. “And then I realized this week … how it feels, what should happen, and when I do hit a bad shot, I kind of know where it comes from. So I feel way more comfortable with it this week and excited about it, because the bad shots haven’t been near as bad as they have been.”

Kisner was a runner-up in the HSBC Champions and won the RSM Classic at Sea Island in his final two tournaments of 2015, and he started the new year by finishing ninth at Kapalua on a weekend where his putter went cold. And here he is again, contending on the weekend after a year in which he had four runner-up finishes at a victory.

“To go out and play the way I did on Sunday at the RSM with a three-shot lead was a huge confidence builder,” Kisner said. “It wasn’t that favorable that I took a month-and-a-half off after it, but to come back and get right back into the fire and have a chance to win this weekend is going to be huge for me.”

Two-time defending champion Jimmy Walker finished with nine straight pars for a 68 to finish on 3-under 137 and make the cut on the number. He was nine shots back.

Kisner and Snedeker were right of the fairway on the par-4 third, having to punch out low to avoid the palm trees. Kisner’s shot caught a frond and came down short of the green, and he pitched to 5 feet and missed the par putt. Snedeker’s shot ran all the way onto the green, and he holed a 35-foot birdie putt for a two-shot lead.

On the par-3 fourth, Snedeker made a 20-foot birdie putt, and then finished with a good chip out of the rough to 4 feet for birdie on the par-5 ninth.

Kisner’s frustration was starting to get noticeable when he bent over so far that his hands nearly touched his shoes on the fifth, but with that eagle on the ninth, he still was only one shot out of the lead.

“I was proud of the way I stayed patient all day,” Kisner said. “That round could have been a few more bogeys if I’d have let not holing any of the putts get to me, but stayed patient, kept hitting good shots and good way to finish it on 9.”

Graham DeLaet of Weyburn, Sask., sits T36 and leads the Canadian contingent at 5-under 135 following a bogey-free 62. Brantford, Ont., native David Hearn is tied for 47th place at 4-under after carding a 71 on the day, while Abbotsford, B.C., products Adam Hadwin and Nick Taylor are T66 at 3-under.

DIVOTS: All three players who are staying on for the Champions Tour season debut next week on the Big Island – Singh, Fred Funk and Davis Love III – made the cut. … Robert Allenby missed the cut by four shots in his return to Honolulu. He shot a 68 on Friday. That was his lowest score since Aug. 2. … Five players who were at Kapalua last week missed the cut – Russell Knox, Justin Thomas, Chris Kirk, Graeme McDowell and Troy Merritt.

JOHANNESBURG – Ross McGowan opened a three-shot lead after two rounds of the European Tour’s Joburg Open following a sizzling 9-under 62 on Friday.

The Englishman, who regained his place on the tour this season, fired six birdies and two eagles on the par-71 West Course at Royal Johannesburg and Kensington to go 14 under for the tournament. That followed his 5-under 67 on the East Course in the opening round.

McGowan surged clear of Jean Hugo, Haydn Porteous, Anthony Wall and Felipe Aguilar, who were all 11 under.

McGowan lost his European Tour card in 2011 but came through qualifying school last year, and tied for 12th at the South African Open last weekend.

Four-time major champion Ernie Els just survived the cut after carding 70-70 for his opening two rounds.

Calgary’s Wes Heffernan has taken a new direction in his golfing career, transitioning from professional competition to high performance coaching.

Heffernan, 38, recorded nine professional victories in his 15-plus years of competition—five Alberta Open titles and four Canadian Tour victories. In 2015, Heffernan played in five Mackenzie Tour-PGA Tour Canada events—making the cut three times while adding another finish on the Web.com Tour.

Heffernan played in two majors – the 2001 and 2011 U.S. Opens, making the cut in 2011.

In his time as an amateur, Heffernan was a two-time Canadian Amateur medalist and an Alberta Amateur Champion.

He also represented Canada internationally on both the professional and amateur level, playing in the 2008 and 2007 World Cup as well as the 2000 World Amateur Team Championship in Berlin, Germany.

A candidate for membership with the PGA of Canada, Heffernan brings years of extensive playing experience to the coaching staff at the Calgary Centre—Golf Canada’s flagship facility.

“The Golf Canada Calgary Centre is certainly thrilled to announce Wes Hefferman has joined our team,” said Chad Rusnak, Director of Golf at the Calgary Centre. “Wes is a teaching professional with a long credible track record of success as a player at both the amateur and professional level and is certainly a positive and welcoming addition to our team. We are currently in the early planning stages and look forward to officially announcing Wes’s decision to join our academy team via a media day in February.”

Click here to book a lesson at the Calgary Centre.

This past fall, after roughly 800 rounds of golf, I witnessed my first hole-in-one. The non-stop flight to the hole touched down on the green a good 10 feet ahead of the target, before beginning a slow, yet steady and methodical, march toward the flag.

Dan Poppers who’d struck the pin-seeking missile had previously bemoaned the ladies seven-iron that had somehow wormed its way into his rental set at Bear Trace at Cumberland Mountain, a beauty of a Nicklaus course an hour west of Knoxville, Tennessee. After finally putting it to good use on the 14th-hole, Poppers was thanking his lucky stars for the club mishap. Still, he miscalculated the extent of his good fortune and missed the magical moment when his ball gently slipped into the jar.

He had figured his rainbow toward the flag was fixing to end up a foot or so short. So Poppers actually had his head down trying to retrieve his tee when it dropped in and he heard us hoot and holler. After Rick, Eric, and myself patted him on the back, Poppers clambered back into his cart and jotted a perfunctory one on his scorecard. He played it off all nonchalant, but this was the first ace this 69-year-old diehard golfer had recorded and nobody was buying the cool as a cucumber act.

When we got back to the clubhouse he was presented with a Bear Trace flag that we all signed and scrawled short messages on with a sharpie to mark the occasion. I wrote: “Poppin’ like it’s hot.” It was then that the enormity of the milestone finally sunk in. When he couldn’t contain his bottled up gusto any longer, he started dialing up his kids and gleefully spilled all the gory details surrounding his glorious one-and-done golf shot.

Just a couple weeks earlier on Sunday morning at The Barclays, Brian Harman airmailed his tee shot on No. 3 priority express into the four and a quarter inch cup 183 yards away. Eleven holes later he gave the gallery at Plainfield Country Club something to really remember by dealing golf’s greatest tee-to-cup parlor trick one more time, carding a 218-yard ace.

Cousin to blue-footed booby bird sightings in the northern hemisphere and buzzer beating full-court swishes in basketball, the one-and-done golf shot is our pastime’s sash-winning spectacle, and a player potting two in one round is almost unthinkable. This was only the third time in PGA Tour history that the mind-blowing deed had been done.

While the tradition calls for a round of drinks at the clubhouse, there’s not much precedent for pulling a twofer so Harman splurged, treating the assembled media to three hundred beers and a bottle of Crown. He cracked wise about it the next day on the Dan Patrick Show: “I wouldn’t wish my bar tab on my worst enemy.”

The odds of pulling a Harman and potting a pair of hole-in-ones in a single round are astronomical. Golf Digest once ball-parked the slim to none occurrence at 67 million to one.

“IN THE HOLE!!!”

To understand the strange confluence of rhyme, reason, and random acts of green rolling kindness that must conspire together to create an elusive ace, I sought the counsel of a business whose viability is dependent upon translating golf luckiness into actuarial tables.

EPA Ultimate Concepts is a Calgary based prize indemnity specialist that insures thousands of hole-in-one contests every year, running the gambit from $2,500 sink-it-and-win-it challenges on up to million dollar shot life-changers.

“We calculate the odds of an average golfer getting a hole in one in a tournament [on a 150-yard hole for men] at 1 in 15,000,” explains Alan Vinet, EPA’s General Manager.

Now in league play, where players play the same course over and over again, the odds improve to around 1 in 10,000.

LUCKY STARS

In the end, it boils down to being really lucky, and that factor often trumps skillset. “I investigate all the hole-in-ones that happen—I not only sell the insurance but I do the claims investigations. You ask what the handicap of the golfer is and it’s all over the board, ” relates Vinet.

Dealing with as many aces as Vinet does, it takes a lot to surprise him. He’s had ones hit a tree and bounce in, or skip across a pond then carom off a rock and rebound onto the green and snake in. Still his mind has been blown on occasion. One particular $100,000 winner floored him. “It was a shotgun start and this guy had rushed into the tournament and barely had time to tie his shoes.”

Winds were gusting to 60 km an hour and the hole ran along a fence that was out of bounds. He hit four-wood, not exactly a common club, and it was heading out of bounds but the mighty winds blessed his shot blowing it back into play. “It rolled something like thirty yards across the green and hit the pin,” exclaims Vinet.

With just under two decades of insuring golf aces under their belt, EPA Ultimate Concepts possesses unique knowledge of rare outlier courses where chances to make a hole-in-one are the best. Despite my incessant pleading, Vinet would not spill the beans.

“There’s one in the East, and one in the West,” he offered coyly.

BUCKING THE ODDS

“The only thing that I know that [rings true] for people to have more hole-in-ones than normal is that they hook the ball,” explains Stephen Johnston, the founding partner of Global Golf Advisors, a consultancy firm laser focused on public courses, private clubs, real estate and resorts. It was formerly KPMG’s golf practice.

Johnston isn’t just guessing, he’s speaking from experience. Aside from being one of the leading authorities on operational analysis and financial solutions in the golf biz he’s also Canada’s Ace King with a jaw dropping 51 attested hole-in-ones to his name.

Johnston got his ace train chugging when he was 12-years-old, just getting his bearings on the game and shooting in the high 90s. The scene was the 12th hole at Whitevale Golf Club, which plays 145-yards from the white tees and you need to clear Duffin’s Creek and a bunker in front to get on the green. Clutching a 4-iron and playing with his father, who had brought two of his friends along, the moment remains crystal clear in his personal highlight reel.

“To me the ball just went in the hole, I had never played a lot of golf and didn’t really understand the significance. My dad and his friends were more excited than I was.”

When it comes to secrets of his ace prowess, Johnston chocks it up to the aforementioned playing a hook and teeing it up really low, barely off the ground on par 3s. While taking dead aim is important, he likes to factor in roll before picking his target.

“When I was younger I would just aim at the flag,” Johnston explain.

“As I got older, because my shots would always land and roll, I would like to figure out if I needed to be right or left of the pin.”

See, nothing to it.

HONOLULU – A month away from turning 53, Vijay Singh showed Thursday in the Sony Open why he doesn’t spend a lot of time with players his own age.

Singh made birdie on his last two holes in gorgeous weather near the shores of Waikiki for a 7-under 63 and a share of the early lead with Ricky Barnes and Morgan Hoffmann. It was Singh’s best score at Waialae by two shots and his lowest opening round in more than three years.

Barnes made four straight birdies at the turn and closed with an up-and-down from behind the green on the par-5 18th, while Hoffman holed a 25-foot eagle putt on his final hole at the par-5 ninth to join the early leaders.

Si Woo Kim of South Korea was another shot back, while Luke Donald and Sean O’Hair were in the group at 65.

Singh won the Sony Open in 2005 when he was No. 1 in the world, a year after the former Masters and PGA champion turned in a nine-win season on the PGA Tour. But he hasn’t won since the Deutsche Bank Championship in 2008, which effectively wrapped up the FedEx Cup.

The big Fijian has been around long enough to realize that a good start is nothing more than that.

“I’ve been playing really well,” he said. “I just haven’t produced the scores. I feel I’m playing well, and see what the next three days bring.”

It helped to hole some long putts, and Singh knocked in a 50-footer for birdie on his third hole. He added a pair of 20-foot birdie putts and a 30-foot birdie putt. More than a good day on the greens, and some solid scrambling at the start, was a book.

He said his body feels better than it has in years, which certainly helps. But he found a book that he has carried with him for the last 20 years that he began reading.

“I haven’t read it for the last 10 years,” he said. “So I picked it up yesterday and started reading a few things that I’ve been doing, and it’s just a different mindset. Golf swing has been the same (so) become a lot more aggressive this year. That’s the plan, to attack the golf course instead of just trying to put it in the fairway and trying to make a good swing.”

The name of the book?

“I can’t tell you,” he said. “I’d have to kill you.”

He laughed.

It was easy to be in good spirits in the warm sun of Oahu and a 63 on his card. Singh is stick around next week for the Champions Tour opener on the Big Island. That’s what of his rare ventures onto the 50-and-older circuit, where he has played only six times since he became eligible in 2013.

Barnes and Hoffman are both trying to win for the first time, and one has been at it a lot longer than the other. Barnes has gone 205 starts on the PGA Tour since he turned pro without winning. He was runner-up at the 2009 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black, and he’s had three third-place finishes in his career.

He had to return to Web.com Tour Finals to get his card back, but making it through and getting off to a reasonable start in the fall were indications that his game was on the right path. He changed coaches 18 months ago to get away from relying on his athleticism to find something more repeatable.

“Some things would click for a round, and then they would kind of go away,” he said. “But I felt like the stuff we are working on now is here to stay.”

Donald made headlines in Britain recently for sharing his thoughts about wanting to quit the game because of the struggles that knocked him from No. 1 in the world to No. 50. He said he was frustrated at the lack of progress, though his wedge game looked sharp at the Sony Open, and that’s the key to getting back in the right direction.

“Those are some fleeting thoughts seven or eight months ago,” he said. “I was feeling a bit down about my game, and I think I was in Memphis in a hard place. And my wife at the time was in Paris with Michael Jordan. I was just thinking I need to be in a higher place in Memphis right now while she’s in Paris. That was just putting it in context.”

Canada’s David Hearn shot 65 and has a share of 9th.

Tim Clark, in his first event since the anchored stroke for long putters was banned, opened with a 66.

Robert Allenby, returning to the Sony Open after a bizarre episode last year that left him with a bloodied forehead, no wallet or cellphone and no memory of what happened, hit his first tee shot out-of-bounds onto the driving range, made triple bogey and played even par the rest of the way for a 73.