Sport

South African golf: a success story

Brad Morgan

South Africa has the weather, the courses ... and the players. The country has produced some of the best in the game, including multiple major winners Bobby Locke, Gary Player, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, and a host of others that regularly challenge for titles around the world.

Gary Player, a nine-time major winner, will forever be associated with two of the greatest players in the history of the game, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. Together, those three took golf to another level, pulling millions of new fans to the game with their great battles down the years.

Player's career is an astounding catalogue of successes, with 163 career victories, far more than either Nicklaus or Palmer managed. Player is also probably the most travelled athlete in the history of sport, having flown in excess of 17.5-million kilometres during his career!

Ernie Els is undoubtedly one of the most popular golfers in the world. He is also one of the best. His apparently easy-going demeanour has earned him the nickname "The Big Easy", although Els says that perception is not quite right; he admits to feeling big pressure, just like everyone else.

Another reason for his nickname is the beautiful, lazy-looking swing that somehow propels the ball over 300 metres down the fairway.

Els is regularly one of the top money-winners on both the European and US PGA Tours, but he also plays in Australia and South Africa, and sometimes in Asia.

Retief Goosen is a quiet man; the only real noise he makes is by his achievements on the golf courses of the world. They say enough, however. He has been a regular top 10 ranked player for some time and, like Els, he fares well wherever he plays.

Goosen captured the US Open title in 2001 and 2004. He is also a two-time winner of the European Order of Merit. The man who stopped his three-peat was Ernie Els.

World Cup success

The Els-Goosen pair won the World Cup of Golf for South Africa in 2001, but more recently it was another South African pair that did the trick. Rory Sabbatini and Trevor Immelman won at Kiawah Island in 2003 to give the country two victories in the last three times the competition has been held. The $700 000 they each pocketed couldn't have hurt, either.

In 2003, Tim Clark also showed the strength of South African golf with a third-place finish in the US PGA. Later in the year he joined Els and Goosen in the International Team for the Presidents Cup. In a wonderful contest and a great advertisement for the game, he helped the Internationals to a memorable tie against the USA at Fancourt near George.

Trevor Immelman stunned the golf world in 2008 when, just four months after having a tumour removed, he captured the US Masters title in convincing fashion. It was a stunning turnaround of his fortunes and it meant he had emulated his hero, Gary Player.

A very healthy local tour, known as the Sunshine Tour, that also co-hosts a few events with the European PGA, ensures that South Africa continues to produce the golfing goods. Over the years it has attracted some of the world's top golfers, often early on in their careers.

South Africa has the weather, it has the courses, and it has the talented players too.

An event that stands out in the minds of many is the Nedbank Challenge at Sun City. The first golf tournament to offer a first-place prize of US$1-million, it has since gone on to be a destination of choice for those among the world's top golfers invited to contest it towards the end of each year.

Recently, foreigners have begun discovering why South Africa has produced such consistently good golfers over the years. The country boasts fantastic courses in a wonderful variety of stunning settings, and the golf tourism industry is just starting to hot up.