Gift Willy Show Stuff in SA

A second place finish on Wednesday has put Nigeria's Gift Willy not only in the finals of the Eskom Power Cup on the Sunshine tour in South Africa but also has placed him as one of the players to beat for the finals of the Cup.

The Air Assault Golf pro In port Harcourt shifted base in February to South africa to give his professional carrier a shift and he not doing bad at it.

For now he is ranked 145th on the Tour a placing which he got only from his Zambia Open performance. " We have misse many of their events here and. acclimatization and the fact that we are only associate members of the tour accounts for the difficulty in making serious impact on the Tour here. But we are improving"

Willy finished the 2006 season in Nigeria as the third best player on tour behind Oche Odoh and Alli Abdullahi and only won only one event (the Pinnacle Open at IBB) last year. Apart he arguably was the most improved player on the tour last year was one of the players tipped to lead the Nigerian ranking this year before he choose to give his career a bigger challenge on the Sunshine Tour.

For Now he is four placed away from Oche Odoh who is ranked 149 after their performance at the Zambia Open( they are the only two Nigerians on the Sunshine Tour for now).

Willy Shot seven birdies, one double-bogey and a bogey to finish four under 68, which places him second out of the 90 players that vied for place in the finals. Oche Odoh placed joint 14th with his 71-one under score at the one day show. three South Africans Dandre Neumeyer, Jaco Ahlers and Andre Wilson shot 67-five under to lead the qualifiers.

The finals of the event runs from friday April 13 to 15th Sunday and 400,000 Rands is the total prize purse for the event.