JOHANNESBURG \u2013 George Coetzee heads into this week\u2019s Joburg Open hoping the tournament does exactly for him what it\u2019s done for Charl Schwartzel and Branden Grace.<\/p>\n
Coetzee is edging closer to a maiden European Tour title following his second-place finish to Chris Wood in the recent Qatar Masters. It was his third top-10 this season, and the 21st of his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to keep playing well. I\u2019ve been working on a few things and have been improving week after week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just kind of hasn\u2019t been my week yet. But it\u2019s always nice to play in an event at home, and it would be awesome to win in front of my friends and family,\u201d said Coetzee.<\/p>\n
And he heads to the Royal Johannesburg and Kensington Golf Club having finished tied 14th and tied seventh in the last two years of the Joburg Open, and well aware of the \u20ac1.3-million tournament\u2019s ability to define a young player\u2019s career.<\/p>\n
Schwartzel\u2019s victory in this event in 2010 carried him to a then career high of 35th on the world rankings. A year later he won the Masters, finished ninth in the US Open and 12th in the PGA Championship and defended his Joburg Open title.<\/p>\n
And, in 2012, Branden Grace arrived with a new European Tour card from qualifying school and re-launched his career with a win in this event, teeing off a season in which he would go on to win a further four times worldwide.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s going to win sooner or later,\u201d Henrik Stenson said after he held off Coetzee down the stretch to win the South African Open last year.<\/p>\n
The reality is that as one of a host of young South Africans making an impact worldwide, Coetzee may feel his turn has come.<\/p>\n
South Africa currently has four players under the age of 30 within the top 50 of the world rankings, including Louis Oosthuizen (fifth), Charl Schwartzel (18th), Branden Grace (29th) and Coetzee (42nd).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JOHANNESBURG \u2013 George Coetzee heads into this week\u2019s Joburg Open hoping the tournament does exactly for him what it\u2019s done for Charl Schwartzel and Branden Grace. Coetzee is edging closer to a maiden European Tour title following his second-place finish to Chris Wood in the recent Qatar Masters. It was his third top-10 this season, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[3258,830,885],"class_list":{"0":"post-17793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-mysport","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-sport","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}