INSIDE THE ROPES

forever

YOUNG

The evergreen Darren Fichardt is ready for the next chapter of his illustrious career  

By MICHAEL VLISMAS​​​​​​​ 

Darren Fichardt will turn 50 in May, and one of the most successful professionals in the history of the Sunshine Tour describes this new phase of his career as ‘a mixed bag of feelings’.


‘Turning 50 opens up a whole new senior golf world for me,’ he says while standing on a tee box at the Joburg Open waiting for the group in front of him. It’s significant because Fichardt has an evergreen status about him. In his own head at least, he still feels like that 11-year-old boy who would chip a golf ball around the garden on his parents’ smallholding in Raslow outside Pretoria.


While he’s about to reach the milestone age of 50, he remains extremely competitive on the Sunshine Tour and DP World Tour where he still plays against ‘the kids'.

He finished second at the 2023-24 Joburg Open, then came into this season’s tournament having finished tie-fourth at the Investec SA Open, thereby securing himself a spot at The Open Championship at Royal Portrush in July. In fact, he’ll go straight from The Open to The Senior Open at Sunningdale, marking off another accomplishment of playing at both Opens this year.


In 2023 he went back to the DP World Tour Q-School and secured his card for a 28th campaign on one of the premier Tours in world golf, retaining his card for 2025. He also won on the HotelPlanner Tour (formerly Challenge Tour) in 2023.


Fichardt is a busy man, so any thought of slowing down is clearly off the table. ‘I feel the same as I did when I was 40,’ he says. ‘If anything, I have a bit more wisdom, which helps.’


In planning where he’ll direct his energies this year, you understand why Fichardt describes it as ‘a mixed bag of feelings’.

‘I feel the same as I did when I was 40. If anything, I have a bit more wisdom, which helps’

‘I’ve hopefully got three Senior Majors I’m in for, and then I have an exemption on the Legends Tour. Hopefully, I can also edge my way on to the PGA Tour Champions. Then I’ve still got a DP World Tour card, and it’s not an easy task to secure a card on that Tour. So I don’t quite know yet. I’ll take it as it comes and see where we go with it,’ he says.

QUICK Q&A


How do you rate the new talent coming through in SA golf?

This new generation is exciting. I’m sure I’ll leave out some players, but you’ve got golfers like Casey Jarvis, Jayden Schaper, Ryan van Velzen and Aldrich Potgieter, and then amateurs like Christiaan Maas and Daniel Bennett who are great to watch.


What advice would you give to young golfers?

I suppose just a lesson from my career. My swing is not textbook, so I had a lot of people advising me against pro golf. My swing was always about feel for me. As I got better the critics started saying things like, ‘How do you plan on making a living out of golf with a swing like that?’ But luckily I didn’t listen too much. I believe nothing is impossible. In our career, you need the mindset that you can achieve anything.


You’ve had some tough times on Tour. What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned?

The realisation that it’s not always going to go your way. You’re going to get knocked down, but the most important thing is not to linger too long on how hard you’ve been knocked down. Just get up and start climbing the ladder again.

FROM THE ARCHIVE

Hear from Fichardt after he won his first SA PGA Championship in a playoff against Marias Calderon in 2020.

But the man who was winning golf tournaments in 1997 when Mark McNulty was still winning on the regular Tour, and whose last victory came in 2023, is certainly looking forward to this new phase of his career – and life.


‘You know, I played a practice round with Ernie at Royal Troon at The Open last year, and the next day I played with Justin Leonard. It was nice seeing all the old guys again, the guys I looked up to. I’m playing with all the kids now, so I’m looking forward to this new chapter in my life.’


The reality is that it’s exactly Fichardt’s enduring competitiveness that has placed him in this position of having so many options available to him.

He lost his DP World Tour card in 2022, and the plan was to actually play his way to his 50th birthday solely on the Sunshine Tour, and then take it from there. But then he won on the HotelPlanner Tour (formerly Challenge Tour) in 2023, and everything changed.


'I had a week off and decided to play on what was then called the Challenge Tour. I won the tournament, so I just decided to play there for the rest of the season. It was hard. On that Tour the guys are really young, so it felt like I was playing junior golf again.'


Fichardt has won in every decade of his life since his twenties, and he’s expected to be a highly competitive golfer on the senior circuit too. It’s a phase that will literally begin in the week he turns 50.


‘My 50th birthday is on 13 May, which is the Tuesday of the Irish Seniors Open, so that’s going to be my first event. I’ll play that and then the next week I’ve got the US Senior PGA. So yeah, I’m jumping straight into it. Very excited.’

TYRONE WINFIELD/CARL FOURIE/SUNSHINE TOUR/DP WORLD TOUR/GETTY IMAGES/Rodrigo Jimenez/epa/backpagepix