Marcus Armitage vowed to stick to what worked for him last season despite changes in his bag and his swing for a successful opening round at the 2026 Nedbank Golf Challenge in honour of Gary Player.
The Englishman finished second at January's Ras Al Khaimah Championship and fifth at both March's Porsche Singapore Classic and September's FedEx Open de France on his way to a top-40 finish in the 2025 Race to Dubai Rankings delivered by DP World.
He began this week's campaign with a six-under-par 66 to share second place behind leader Kristoffer Reitan in Sun City and hailed "a cool day".
Armitage started from the tenth and turned in 31 before adding a sixth birdie at the first hole.
He moved to eight under with gains at the first and sixth only for a closing seven at the par-five ninth to leave him tied with Jesper Svensson and Adrien Saddier, three off Reitan's lead after the Norwegian's stunning 63.
Armitage revealed a recent change to his swing and also has new clubs in his bag at either end of the distance scale.
He said: “I haven’t had a club sponsor for a year, so I’ve been using the spider putter for a year now - a slightly different one this week, different face but everything (set up) the same.
"New driver but everything the same really, just trying to keep everything simple.
“I spent three days in Dubai with Liam James, my swing coach, and we started to work on a new thing on the downswing. It’s great to come here and test it on a golf course like this, it’s really tricky and a good golf course.
“It worked for 17 holes! So back to the range and iron that out, but yeah, great day.”
