GAUTENG, South Africa – Branden Grace’s charge up the leaderboard at the SA Open was halted by stormy weather Friday, with play abandoned midway through the second round.

The South African was tied for the lead with countryman Keith Horne at 8 under, after going through 11 holes in 5 under, when play was called off for the day at Glendower Golf Club because of the threat of lightning.

Horne held the clubhouse lead after shooting a 3-under 69 to follow up his first-round 67.

Eleven of the leading 13 players are from South Africa, which has delivered 12 winners in 19 editions of the event since it joined the European Tour in 1997.

Jbe Kruger is a shot behind after a 70. Justin Walters (70), Brandon Stone (67) and Ross McGowan (70) were at 6-under 138 after two rounds.

Play also ended early on Thursday because of similar bad weather, meaning 33 people had to return early Friday to complete their first round. Seventy-eight of the remaining 154 players are yet to finish their second rounds.

Grace is the highest-ranked player in the field at No. 14 and has won three of his six European Tour titles in his native country. He sank birdie putts from Nos. 2-5 and also picked up shots at Nos. 10 and 11.

Playing alongside Grace, Jaco van Zyl was the first-round leader after a 65 but he bogeyed three of the first nine holes in his second round before a double-bogey at No. 10, after finding the water, dropped him to 3 under. He still had seven holes to play.

It was even worse for Shaun Norris, who was a shot behind Van Zyl after the first round. Norris dropped 11 shots in 12 holes Friday, leaving him on 5 over and likely to miss the cut.

GAUTENG, South Africa – Jaco van Zyl shot a 7-under 65 Thursday to top a South African-dominated leaderboard in the first round of the SA Open, the European Tour’s first event of 2016.

Van Zyl maintained the form that put him in ties for eighth and 13th at the season-opening Alfred Dunhill Championship and Nedbank Golf Challenge before Christmas, hitting six birdies and an eagle.

It was the 36-year-old Van Zyl’s first round of golf without the assistance of knee braces since he underwent surgery to both knees in March 2014.

Shaun Norris was alone in second place after a 66, and Jbe Kruger and Keith Horne were tied for third at 5 under at Glendower Golf Club as South Africans filled the top four places. Two more were in a six-way tie at 4 under – Justin Walters and 2006 winner Retief Goosen – on a low-scoring day when the rough was less penal after a recent drought and heatwave.

Defending champion Andy Sullivan of England shot 3 over and was 10 strokes off the pace.

Play was suspended for the day because of the threat of lightning, with 33 players still to finish their rounds. Nicolas Colsaerts (shoulder) and Richard Finch (Achilles) retired in the first round.

Van Zyl has 13 victories on South Africa’s Sunshine Tour but is yet to win on the European Tour, with the most recent of his four runner-up finishes coming at the Turkish Airlines Open in November.

“I’ve had a couple of weeks off, spending time with the family,” Van Zyl said. “I’ve had my fair share of whisky and Christmas pudding so it was really nice to get off to a good start.”

Starting at No. 10, Van Zyl picked up four shots on his front nine, and moved to 7 under after an eagle 3 at the par-5 second hole. He made up for his only bogey of the round, on No. 7, by making a birdie from three feet on the next hole.

LONDON – Christy O’Connor Jr., the Irish golfer who produced the shot of his career to help Europe win the 1989 Ryder Cup, has died. He was 67.

The European Tour said Wednesday that O’Connor died in his sleep while on holiday in Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands.

The crowning moment of O’Connor’s career came at the Ryder Cup at The Belfry in 1989.

O’Connor hit a 2-iron from the fairway to about 3 ½ feet for a birdie at the 18th to beat Fred Couples. The shot helped ensure the Ryder Cup finished 14-14, meaning Europe retained the trophy as defending champion.

European Tour chief executive Keith Pelley laid out ambitious plans with hopes of becoming a “viable alternative” to the PGA Tour.

That starts with an increase in prize money, and he went so far as to say that it would make more sense for the European Tour’s flagship event to be the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai ($8 million purse) instead of the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth ($5 million purse) because of the money.

Another measure of the mountain he has to climb is the world ranking.

The gap continues to widen in the average ranking points for PGA Tour events compared with Europe – up an average of one point this year, two points from 2012.

Including the four majors and the four World Golf Championships, the PGA Tour averaged 56.4 points for the winner compared with 42.2 points for the European Tour. That’s a difference of 14.2 points, up from 13.3 points a year ago.

Throw out the majors (each worth 100 points) and the WGCs, and the PGA Tour offered an average of 49.5 points compared with 32.9 points for the European Tour.

The European Tour had six regular events that offered 50 points or more, including the BMW PGA Championship, which is guaranteed 64 points as the flagship event. The PGA Tour had seven events that offered 60 points or more, including The Players Championship, which is guaranteed 80 points (The Players actually has a stronger field by raw numbers than three of the majors).

The four events in The Finals Series for the Race to Dubai offered an average of 53 points to the winner. The four FedEx Cup playoff events on the PGA Tour awarded an average of 68.5 points to the winner.

Pelley is aware he needs time to become a viable option, and his target is the next generation of players.

“That’s not going to happen necessarily in 2016,” Pelley said last month in Dubai. “You’ll start to see it happen in 2017. You’ll start to see it come to fruition in 2018. We definitely in three to five years will have a viable alternative, so that 17-, 18-, 19-year-old doesn’t necessarily need to go to America to be able to make as much money as they possibly can.”

VIRGINIA WATER, England – Rory McIlroy has been voted the European Tour’s player of the year for 2015, winning the award for the third time in the past four seasons.

The 26-year-old Northern Irishman successfully defended the Race to Dubai title after winning the season-ending World Tour Championship in Dubai last month. He had two other victories, at the Dubai Desert Classic and the WGC-Cadillac Match Play.

McIlroy says he feels “very proud to have won this prestigious award for the third time.”

He says it is “always special, no matter how often, to be recognized this way.”

The former top-ranked McIlroy was granted special dispensation to play the European Tour’s Final Series. He had not fulfilled the standard membership criteria because of an ankle injury sustained midway through the year.

ROME – The Ryder Cup is headed to Italy for the first time, with the Marco Simone club in Rome chosen Monday to host golf’s biggest team event in 2022.

Italy beat rival bids from Germany, Spain and Austria to secure hosting rights for the 44th edition of the biennial competition between Europe and the United States.

It will be the third time the event is staged in continental Europe, after Valderrama in Spain in 1997 and Le Golf National in Paris in 2018.

European Tour chief executive Keith Pelley said Rome offered a “bold and ambitious bid.”

“History has shown time and again that the Ryder Cup is pure theater with the players and the stars, and there is no question that the Eternal City of Rome will provide a wonderful backdrop for one of the great occasions in world golf,” he said.

The Jim Fazio-designed course, which hosted the 1994 Italian Open, is located in Guidonia, 27 kilometers (17 miles) northeast of central Rome. The course will undergo a complete reconstruction for the Ryder Cup.

“The Italian bid was consistently strong and impressive across the board in terms of infrastructure, commercial structure and government support,” Europe’s Ryder Cup director Richard Hills said. “The plans outlined for the golf course at Marco Simone are spectacular alongside the commitment to develop all levels of golf in Italy.”

The course will likely form part of Rome’s bid for the 2024 Olympics. Rome is competing against Paris, Los Angeles and Budapest, Hungary for the games. Golf is returning to the Olympics next year in Rio de Janeiro.

“This is enormous and fundamental for our entire movement, plus a great lead-in to the Olympic bid,” Italian Golf Federation President Franco Chimenti told The Associated Press.

Golf is a growing sport in Italy, helped by the recent success of professionals like brothers Edoardo and Francesco Molinari and Matteo Manassero.

At the 2012 Ryder Cup, Francesco Molinari halved the last singles match with Tiger Woods to complete a comeback victory and help Europe retain the Cup.

Hazeltine National in Minnesota will host the Ryder Cup next year, followed by Le Golf National in 2018 and Whistling Straits in Wisconsin in 2020.

SUN CITY, South Africa – Marc Leishman picked up his maiden European Tour title on Sunday with a six-stroke victory at the Nedbank Challenge.

The Australian, who started the final round ahead of Henrik Stenson by one shot, carded a 5-under 67 to finish on 19-under 269. He won $1.25 million.

The 32-year-old Leishman’s previous best finish on the tour was at this year’s British Open, when he lost a playoff to Zach Johnson.

Three straight birdies either side of the turn meant that Stenson trailed by two shots with eight holes to play, but the Swede finished poorly to shoot a par 72 on the day.

“I knew it was going to be a really tough day, I knew I had to play well,” Leishman said. “I’m really pleased that I could play as well as I did and have a little bit of a buffer there at the end.”

The turning point in the final round came at the par 3 seventh hole, when Stenson found a bunker and dropped a shot while Leishman holed a tricky 10-foot putt for birdie.

That opened up a three-shot gap between the duo, and although Stenson pulled one back at the eighth he was still forced into an aggressive game on the back nine.

While Leishman was faultless from that point on, finishing the tournament with just three bogeys in total, Stenson bogeyed Nos. 15 and 18.

“Golf’s a lot easier when you don’t have to make up lost ground, especially on this golf course where there’s trouble everywhere,” Leishman said.

The third member of the final group, Jaco van Zyl, fell away badly after starting the day on 10 under.

The South African opened with a bogey before recovering with an excellent approach shot at the second that brought his second eagle of the week. However, he double-bogeyed the sixth to drop out of contention.

Five further bogeys saw Van Zyl card a 6-over 78 to finish tied for 13th.

Van Zyl’s profligacy opened the door for England’s Chris Wood (68) to finish third on 9 under.

Danny Willett of England and Frenchman Victor Dubuisson also shot 68 to share fourth place with South Africa’s Branden Grace (71) and American Robert Streb (73) on 8 under.

Byeong Hun An of South Koreea (68) was eighth, while South African Charl Schwartzel (70) and Thailand’s Thongchai Jaidee (71) tied for ninth.

GOLD COAST, Australia – Australian Nathan Holman parred the first hole of a three-way playoff with American Harold Varner III and South Africa’s Dylan Frittelli to win the Australian PGA championship on Sunday.

Holman, who shot a final-round 1-over 73, and Frittelli and Varner, who each had 75s, finished with even-par totals of 288 on a tough, wind-swept Royal Pines resort course.

Holman led by two strokes but bogeyed his final two holes. Varner’s birdie attempt on 18 that would have given him the win in regulation slid just wide of the cup.

The Australian was the only one on the fairway in the playoff and hit to the middle of the green, while Frittelli and Varner were off the green after hitting their second shots from the rough.

The 24-year-old Holman ended the playoff with a one-foot par putt after Frittelli and Varner bogeyed. The victory earned him an exemption this season and next on the European Tour, which co-sanctioned the Australian PGA this year.

Zander Lombard of South Africa, who was tied for the third-round lead with Frittelli and Varner, shot 76 and finished fourth, one stroke behind the leading trio.

“It was pretty annoying to almost lose it at the end,” Holman said of his bogey-bogey finish in regulation.

Holman also finished first in the PGA Tour of Australasia Order of Merit, which qualifies him for the British Open and the World Golf Championships.

“It’s huge, I didn’t realize what was on the line,” said Holman, who began the day two strokes off the lead.

“It’s probably a good thing, to be honest. I did think I’d get to those events in the future. I didn’t think it would be this quickly. To do it off the back of a victory is probably going to be better – I’ve deserved it. It’s stuff you dream of playing golf as a kid.”

It was the second straight year that the tournament was decided in a playoff: Greg Chalmers won a marathon seven-hole playoff with Adam Scott and Wade Ormsby in 2014.

Holman’s win continues years of Australian dominance at the PGA, which hasn’t been won by an international player since New Zealand’s Greg Turner in 1999.

Varner’s 66 had pulled him into the third-round lead, but he was nine strokes worse on Sunday.

“That’s just the way it goes sometimes,” Varner said. “I’ll be all right. I’m going to go have a great Christmas and get back to it. Just got to keep working and good things will happen. My time will come eventually.”

The newly designed back nine at Royal Pines by former Australian golfer Graham Marsh had six of the toughest nine holes on the course.

Organizers had a million-dollar “party hole” on the par-3 16th on Sunday, set up with bars and entertainment similar to a hole at the Phoenix Open. The closest anyone came to winning a 1 million Australian dollars ($734,000) bonus was Australian Matt Griffin, whose tee shot landed only six inches away from the hole.

SUN CITY, South Africa – Marc Leishman birdied the last two holes to capitalize on Henrik Stenson’s slip-ups and move into the lead on the third day of the Nedbank Challenge.

The Australian began on 8-under par, trailing Stenson by three shots, but a strong back nine saw him close Saturday on a 6-under 66 that left him 14 under and a stroke ahead of the Swede.

Stenson’s birdies at the 14th and 15th put some daylight between himself and the chasing pack, but a three-putt on No. 16 brought a bogey and he went on to drive his tee shot at the 18th into the bunker.

The 2008 champion lost his cool at that point, throwing his bag down, and another bogey saw him sign for a 70.

The 32-year-old Leishman is chasing his first European Tour win after coming close at this year’s British Open, when he lost a playoff to Zach Johnson.

“I saw Henrik was getting away a little bit so I had to try to do something to make it interesting for tomorrow,” Leishman said. “I’ve been in this position a few times in big events so it’s great to draw on that experience.”

Jaco van Zyl drained a long putt at the last to finish with a birdie and end the day on 10 under, while American Robert Streb matched the South African’s 72 to sit a shot behind in fourth place.

Van Zyl’s compatriots, Branden Grace and Louis Oosthuizen, both enjoyed good days to ensure a strong South African presence in the top 10.

Grace’s 67 left him tied for fifth with Austrian Bernd Wiesberger on 7 under, while Oosthuizen was a further shot back in seventh after his 68.

GOLD COAST, Australia – American Harold Varner III shot a 6-under 66 Saturday to move into a three-way share of the lead after three rounds of the Australian PGA championship.

Varner, who bounced his approach shot off the 18th-hole grandstand but scrambled to make par for the best round of the day, had a 54-hole total of 3-under 213.

He’s tied with two South Africans – Dylan Frittelli and Zander Lombard – who each shot 71.

They and fourth-place Australian Nathan Holman, who shot 70 and is two strokes behind, are the only players under par on the wind-swept Royal Pines course.

Second-round leader David Lingmerth shot 75 and was tied for fifth, three strokes behind. American Peter Uihlein, a stroke from the lead after two rounds, fell out of contention with a 79 and is tied for 25th, eight strokes behind.

Lombard held a late lead by one stroke but missed a six-foot par putt on the 18th. Lingmerth had double bogeys on the par-4 10th and 14th holes.

Varner shot a bogey-free round and birdied 14, 15 and 16 despite the gusty conditions in the joint Australian and European Tour event.

“The wind’s a pain right now,” said Varner, who joins Tiger Woods as the only player of black heritage on the PGA Tour this year.

“I haven’t played in that much wind in a long time. When bad things happen, you’ve just got to shake it off and go onto the next one. Today I did that really well.”