Gabrielle Venter is very much her own person. Someone who is happy to figure things out her way. When all her friends went the US college golf scholarship route, she decided it wasn’t for her. It felt like school interfered with her golf. And even when it comes to reading, she admits she could probably do more of it, but working on her short game feels like time better spent.

“I’ve always been my own person. I don’t follow everybody,” says the 20-year-old Venter. So it’s hardly surprising that when the former top GolfRSA amateur turned professional on last season’s Sunshine Ladies Tour, she was going to learn the ropes her own way. And it didn’t take too long.

Despite saying it took her time to adjust, Venter made an incredible start to her rookie season by finishing fifth and second at her first two tournaments and then broke through with her maiden victory at the Standard Bank Ladies Open.

“The secret behind that win was that I think I just got used to playing professional golf. It’s quite different to amateur golf, which I didn’t expect.

“It’s not so much the aspect of playing for money, that didn’t influence me too much. It’s just that the fields are so much bigger. I mean, when I arrived at my first professional tournament on the Sunshine Ladies Tour, suddenly you don’t know anybody. You have all these players from Europe, and they all have their Trackmans on the range, and you’re still trying to figure everything out.

“Then when you play, you can see your skill level is the same or even better than some of them, but they just score incredibly low and you wonder why you’re not also shooting nine under par. In amateur golf there were big gaps in the scores so bogeys didn’t really matter. But if you make a drop in pro golf you can drop 20 places on the leaderboard. So it was just adjusting to all of that.

“Mentally I was a bit stronger by the time my win came. For that week in particular, I didn’t care if I won or not. I just played and didn’t focus on the score. I was very calm.”

As big of an adjustment as it was, Venter made it relatively quickly and was happy to do whatever was needed to pursue her dream. A dream that is by no means a guarantee of an easy career.

“I never wanted to be anything else. My dad used to play professional cricket, and my nephew plays rugby for the Sharks. It was always just sport for me. That’s why when it came to college, I just felt it restricted the time I could work on my game. It wasn’t a difficult choice for me not to go. Just watching Casandra [Alexander] perform so well, and she also didn’t go to college, definitely helped the choice.”

Venter has grabbed every opportunity to learn over the past few months. She’s grown her game playing alongside the Sunshine Tour professionals on the Vodacom Origins of Golf series, where the leading Sunshine Ladies Tour golfers compete for the same prize money as the men.

“It’s important to push yourself to their level even though we’re not hitting the same clubs. It pushes you to shoot lower scores. You also learn to sometimes prioritise par over birdie. I don’t think I’ve ever scrambled as well as I did at the Vodacom Origins of Golf at Highland Gate.”

She also took in everything from the experience of playing at two Access tournaments and two Ladies European Tour events this year.

“I played a practice round with a European golfer and just watched how she mapped out the greens and chose her target. The next day in the first round she shot nine under par.”

Venter will also look to take all this experience into the 2025 season on the Sunshine Ladies Tour.

“It was part of the plan for me to win in my rookie season. Now I want to win every tournament I play.”

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IMAGES: TYRONE WINFIELD/CARL FOURIE/SUNSHINE TOUR/LET ACCESS SERIES