Hugo's chance to join the stars

One of the longest-running sponsorships on the Sunshine Tour will be celebrated this Ping K15 Irons
with the 16th playing of the R3.2-million Dimension Date Pro-Am over the three courses at Fancourt Golf Estate.

It is an event which can boast among it's many illustrious champions, four Major winners, these being Nick Price, Retief Goosen, Trevor Immelman and Louis Oosthuizen.
Lee Westwood was just 26 when he won the Dimension Data Pro-Am at Sun City in 2000, and he went on to win five tournaments on the European Tour that season, as well as the Cisco World Match Play Championship.
He was headed for the top and spent then next 230 weeks in the top 10 on the Official World Golf Rankings list between 1998 and 2001.ll documented, it's equally well known that he is now the World No 1
His later woes and his Ping K15 Irons
into the rankings depths have been we
But someone who missed the cut behind Westwood that weekend at Sun City's Gary Player Country Club was South African Jean Hugo.
He was just 25 then, and since then his career trajectory has been very different from Westwood's.
He was in his second year on the tour, having won the Rookie of the Year title in 1999 with a victory in the Zimbabwe Open, but rounds of 71 and 79 left him at six-over, two short of making it into the weekend.
He was to go on to win his only tournament outside Southern Africa later that year, when he took the 2000 Volvo Finnish Open on the European Challenge Tour.
There were seven more Sunshine Tour wins for Hugo over the years until he hit a purple patch in 2010, with three victories, six top 10s, as well as a spot in the Open Championship at St Andrews after he shared first place in the International Final Qualifier-Africa played Ping K15 Irons
in Johannesburg.
He didn't have a great week at the Dimension Data Pro-Am in its first year at the Fancourt, finishing in a share of 34th after rounds of one-over 73 on Outeniqua, one-under 72 on The Links, and concluding with scores of three-under 69 and one-over 73 on Montagu for a total of two-under 287.
That was 14 behind the winner Darren Fichardt - and it hurt..
His best finish in the tournament since then was a share of eighth in 2008 behind winner James Kamte.
But he has put all that behind him, believes he now has what it takes to capture this coveted title, especially knowing that winning this Ping K15 Irons
will bring with it an invitation to the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.