SOUTH AFRICAN Charl Schwartzel could claim to be the consistent player in golf right now.
The 28-year-old shares the halfway lead with France’s Gregory Bourdy after a sparkling second round 64 in the Alfred Dunhill Championship on home soil at Leopard Creek.
After finishes of fifth, third and second in the past month Schwartzel won the Thailand Championship by 11 shots last Sunday against a field that included Bubba Watson, his successor as Masters champion this April, Lee Westwood and Sergio Garcia.
He was 25 under par there and is now already 13 under on a course where his record includes one win and four second places.
Schwartzel is 73 under for his last four and a half tournaments and even after adding a 65 to his pace-setting opening 66 Bourdy did not under-estimate the size of the task facing him over the weekend.
After being overtaken when Schwartzel played his first 11 holes in seven under, making his eagle at the 541-yard 18th, three-time European Tour winner Bourdy pitched in for an eagle two on the sixth and converted curling 25-foot birdie putts at the fifth and eighth.
Darren Fichardt’s 68 left him in third with fellow South African Louis De Jager and England’s Steve Webster one further back.
Webster lost a play-off for the rain-shortened Nelson Mandela Championship in Durban last weekend and the player who beat him there, Scotland’s Scott Jamieson, is also going well again at six under.
David Drysdale is three under, George Murray two under, Peter Whiteford one under, Marc Warren level par, while Callum Macaulay, Craig Lee, Scott Henry and Alan Maclean all missed the cut.