His first win on the Sunshine Tour came in the 1999 Zimbabwe Open, and, although this year’s tournament is being played at Royal Harare Golf Club instead of Chapman Golf Club, Jean Hugo is looking to get another Zimbabwe Open title under his belt.

With 17 Sunshine Tour victories to his name, the sixth most by any player, Hugo hasn’t won on the tour since September 2015, and, with four more titles needed to catch the man in fifth place on the all-time list, John Bland, he will be keen to use the third round in the 2017 Zimbabwe Open to set himself up for win number 18.

At 10-under-par at the halfway mark, he finds himself four off the scorching pace set by Trevor Fisher Jnr after the latter’s superb course-record equalling nine-under-par 63 in the second round.

And, after Hugo opened with a seven-under 65, he could be forgiven for feeling slightly aggrieved that his solid-enough three-under 69 second round was not enough to keep him atop the leaderboard.

“I didn’t play as well as I did in the first round,” he said. “I struggled to get it going on the back nine. I shot level there, but I had a few opportunities. I’m a little bit disappointed but I’m still there or thereabouts.”

He had a front row seat while Fisher put on his nine-birdie extravaganza. He was full of praise for Fisher’s round. “I think he missed one green,” he said, “and he holed a lot of good putts. I think he had seven one-putts on the front nine. He played very well, so 63 was probably the worst he could have shot.

“It was good to see it, and it bodes well for the weekend. We’re going to have a nice battle and I’ll have to play well if he keeps going like this. It’s actually an incentive to do better than I did today,” he added.

To do that, he needs to put behind him the fact that he’s a player who thrives on playing a number of tournaments in a row, and that this is the first tournament of the 2017-18 Sunshine Tour season. “I’ll have to focus more on what I want to do,” he said. “It’s easy out there to miss your targets. For me, it’s the wandering eye – I need to focus on the target instead of where the problems are from the tee and towards the pin.

“I think I’ve got to zone in a little bit more and try and focus on where I want to hit it and not on where I don’t want to hit it. Then it should be okay, because we’re all putting well. It’s just I wasn’t quite on my game as I was in the first round.”

But he’s relishing the battle with Fisher in the third round. “It’s going to be nice,” he said. “If it’s anything like the second round, we’ll have a good battle.”