{"id":38182,"date":"2025-07-04T13:40:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T13:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/38182\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T13:40:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T13:40:09","slug":"aldrich-potgieter-admits-mistake-he-made-on-day-one-at-the-john-deere-which-had-nothing-to-do-with-his-golf-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/38182\/","title":{"rendered":"Aldrich Potgieter admits mistake he made on day one at the John Deere which had nothing to do with his golf game"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aldrich Potgieter seemingly has absolutely everything needed to become the next superstar player on the PGA Tour.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Potgieter<\/a> won his first PGA Tour<\/a> event at the Rocket Classic<\/a> last week, and at just 20, his future is very bright indeed.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Potgieter made PGA Tour history became only the fifth man<\/a> from outside of the United States to win before his 20th birthday.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no rest for the wicked though, as the South African didn\u2019t even have time to properly celebrate his victory in Detroit, before making the 400-mile trip over to Silvis, Illinois to compete at the John Deere Classic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Potgieter must be walking on thin air right now. Can life get better for a 20-year-old? That\u2019s highly doubtful, if you love golf of course!<\/p>\n

He fired a four-under par 67 on day one at TPC Deere Run on Thursday.<\/p>\n

However, the youngster admitted to making a big mistake that had absolutely nothing to do with his golf game.<\/p>\n

Aldrich Potgieter admits mistake he made on day one at the John Deere<\/p>\n

Potgieter addressed the media after finishing his round in Silvis, Illinois on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n

His round of 67 consisted of two eagles, two birdies and two bogeys.<\/p>\n

\"AldrichPhoto by Raj Mehta\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

He would surely have been more than happy with that after the extremely hectic past few days he would have experienced.<\/p>\n

When speaking to the press post-round, Potgieter responded when asked whether winning last week in Detroit has made it difficult to focus at TPC Deere Run this week.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI mean, I can\u2019t stop smiling when people talk about it, so that\u2019s a good thing. The big thing is coming off the win, I\u2019ve never played a tournament after I won such a big event, so I really didn\u2019t know how today was going to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuite happy how I did and how I handled it. I didn\u2019t know if I was going to be tired coming into this last little stretch. With the heat we had today, probably made a mistake wearing black and dark red. Won\u2019t be doing that tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m happy how it went today coming off the win. The first two days, Monday and Tuesday, were quite tough. Took it easy, traveled, and came and walked around a little bit.\u201c<\/p>\n

Then the 20-year-old was asked if he has had to change his routine because of the exhaustion factor.<\/p>\n

Potgieter replied: \u201cI have to say Tuesday we played nine. We were only going to walk the nine to see where tee shots need to be hit and what the slopes on the greens kind of look like. We only played about seven holes and we walked the last two trying to get off the courses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe only teed off around 3:00, so it was getting a little cooler and it was a temperature that time of day to not play in the heat.\u201c<\/p>\n

With temperatures set to soar over 90 degrees again on Friday, Potgieter would do well to avoid the dark colours!<\/p>\n

Aldrich Potgieter explained why his prodigious length can be problematic<\/p>\n

There is nobody on the PGA Tour who is anywhere near as long at the big South African.<\/p>\n

His average of 327.4 yards off the tee is more than seven yards longer than second placed Rory McIlroy.<\/p>\n

Whilst his average ball speed of 190.32 is around three mph faster than second placed Nicolai Hojgaard.<\/p>\n

However, Potgieter\u2019s length is seemingly a curse sometimes, as well as a blessing.<\/p>\n

Potgieter responded to a question about his enormous length<\/a> last week, when asked by reporters whether his swing speed makes it difficult for him to control his yardages with his irons.<\/p>\n

The 20-year-old said: \u201cYeah, I had five wedges in my bag at a time and we\u2019ve gone back to four, so that makes the gaps a lot bigger, but I had a fitting with Titleist and we improved a lot on what the ball\u2019s doing and spin control and I think that was the hardest part. I think my technique was good, I just struggled with the equipment a little bit to kind of do what I was wanting to do. I think I was just fighting a little bit too much, especially with the wedges and irons. It was a lot better this week and should be good now.\u201c<\/p>\n

Having the kind of swing speed and ball speed that Potgieter possesses is obviously a huge advantage.<\/p>\n

However, there are clearly some downsides to being that long as well.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aldrich Potgieter seemingly has absolutely everything needed to become the next superstar player on the PGA Tour. Potgieter…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":38183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[17134,1430,27068,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-38182","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-aldrich-potgieter","9":"tag-golf","10":"tag-john-deere-classic","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114795252040340912","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}