Women's Golf Association of India

Pranavi, Ridhima start season in South Africa

Sun City, South Africa, Feb 1:Pranavi Urs and Ridhima Dilawari will tee off their international season at the SuperSport Ladies Challenge presented by Sun International at the Gary Player Country Club this week.

Pranavi has gone to South Africa fresh from her win in India on the domestic Hero WPG Tour. She will play a couple of more events in South Africa and later focus herself on the Epson Tour, the second rung Tour to LPGA in the US.

Reigning Investec South African Women’s Open champion Lee-Anne Pace headlines the field. The circuit celebrates its 10th anniversary this year and there are players from 25 other countries in the line-up, together with 38 entrants from South Africa in a large field of 87.

Pace, who won her fifth national open title when she took a nail-baiting play-off victory on the sixth extra hole at Steenberg Golf Club over Argentina’s Magdalena Simmermacher in April last year, will be the player to catch at Sun City.

But players like Casandra Alexander and Nicole Garcia, both of whom had solid showings on the Ladies European Tour in 2022, will be itching to display their wares on the local tour that has six high-octane events on its schedule from the beginning of February until mid-March.

Last year, the local circuit heralded the emergence of Sweden’s Linn Grant as a world-class player. She won three times in South Africa – the Dimension Data Ladies Challenge, the Jabra Ladies Classic and the co-sanctioned Joburg Ladies Open – before winning two more titles on the Ladies European Tour (LET).

The European circuit’s leading rookie and the Costa Del Sol winner in 2022 also became the first woman to win on the DP World Tour when she won the Volvo Car Scandinavian Mixed, beating, amongst others, her countryman Henrik Stenson, the 2016 Open champion.

The LET has underscored its commitment to the Sunshine Ladies Tour by again co-sanctioning the Joburg Ladies Open from March 1-4 March, and the Investec South African Women’s Open from 8-11 March.