At 561 in the world rankings, Basson appears an unlikely candidate to be topping the leaderboard in the European Tour’s opening event of 2016. But his latest form on the local Sunshine Tour makes this far from a surprise. The South African has posted a win and four other top 10s in his last eight starts and also opened with a 64 when T8 in last week’s Cape Town Open. He’s also played in this event on six previous occasions, cashing four times and taking a share of 15th in 2011. Today, Basson picked off birdies at 2, 5, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14 and 16. He currently leads by three from Mark Williams, Matt Ford and Charl Schwartzel although the latter still has a hole to finish off on Friday morning after a storm threat halted play early on Thursday. “I was coming into this week with good form but you can’t expect that good a round first off,” said Basson.
