The playoff took place on the 10th hole, probably the most difficult hole on the course, a long par 4 with bunkers all the way down the left side.
Richard Heath found some long grass on the right with his second shot and could only get it to the fringe with his 3rd, after his par chip rolled just past the hole he could only make a bogey.
Alexander pulled his second shot with a long iron into the left rough and his chip landed softly and did not run down the slope to the hole, he was left with a putt of about 4m for par.
Felix had hit it in the best position from the tee with a much shorter distance for his approach, but he was in the semi-rough and could not quite control his approach which ended up in the rough right of the green. His flop shot from that position was rather unlucky, hitting the bottom of the flag without bouncing and deflecting some 5-6m away. The shot was a good one and would have ended a lot closer if it had not hit the flag.
Felix's par putt was a bit of a disappointment, left some 90cm short of the hole... which left the way clear for Alexander to putt for the title. His 4m putt went right in the middle of the hole and the playoff was over. Alexander had led after every round of the tournament and fully deserved his victory.
Today's round was a real struggle, birdies came easily but so did mistakes and I was fighting all day to try and keep my score as low as possible. My swing was not really there at all so I really had to concentrate, nothing seemed to happen "automatically". I had a few disasters, shanking my second shot on the 6th from a perfect position 85m from the flag led to an ugly double bogey but I came straight back with a birdie on the 7th after hitting my approach to 25cm. Then I forgot how to putt for about an hour... three putting the 9th from about 4m and missing from 90cm on the 10th for another bogey and when I followed up a careless bogey on 14 with a messy double bogey on the difficult 15th I had slipped to 5 over on the day and 3 over for the tournament. |
The final scores can be seen below.