Hi there,

There is a great wave of young South African golfers coming through the ranks, most notably recent PGA Tour winner, Garrick Higgo, rising star Christiaan Bezuidenhout and big hitting Wilco Nienaber.

Last weekend however, it was Christiaan Burke’s time to get some serious social media attention.

He shot 56 on the 7000 yard, par 72 Potchefstroom country club in South Africa. Yes, you read that correctly, 56, that is 16 under par for the round.

I have known Christiaan Burke since he was a teenager and have followed his improvement as a player closely over the years. So it was great to see him achieve something so rare and so special.

Louis Oosthuizen famously shot 57 at the course he grew up on, Mosselbay golf club. So watch out Louis Oosthuizen, your 57 was beaten by 1.

Let’s take a look at how his round fit together.

If you look at his Strokes Gained stats below, you’ll see that he only gained 1.98 shots with his Putting. For a round this low, I would expect a huge gain in Putting. Christiaan actually achieved this round on the back of some truly incredible ball striking. That is a 7.87 gain in Approach play! AMAZING SKILL

Something else I like to look at in the Golf Stats Coach app, is the “What If” section. This indicates the score a player would have shot, if their 5 worst shots of the day, were just average shots, in other words a Strokes Gained of zero for those shots.

Christiaan would have only bettered his score by 1 shot. This means he simply hit very few bad golf shots.

You can also see that he had his best ever performances with his Driving and Approach play, compared to above average days with his Short Game and Putting.

But even on a day as good as this, there are still areas Christiaan can work on. He lost 0.69 shots vs. a Tour benchmark with his Putting from 16 - 21 feet. He missed the putts on the high side of the hole and left to right putts were the most costly to him.

So keep a look out for Christiaan Burke, no doubt you’ll be hearing this name on the Tours of the world in the future.

Also give him a follow on Instagram to keep up with his progress.

Till next time,

Martin