Sabbatini, Sterne for Golf WC
15 November 2006
A South African team of Rory Sabbatini and Richard Sterne has been named to contest the 2006 World Golf Championships-Barbados World Cup from 7 to 10 December. It will be the fifty-second time the prestigious event is held.
The pair will be representing South Africa against 27 other countries, with participants in the event having combined for 21 wins around the world over the course of the past season.
Under the World Cup criteria, the leading 18 available players of different nationalities in the world rankings automatically qualified their countries for the event at one of the most desirable holiday destinations in the world.
Each of those players is allowed to select their partner, as long as that player is ranked in the world's top 100 or, should that not be possible, the next highest-ranked golfer is offered the spot.
Sabbatini's choice
This year the mantle fell on Sabbatini, who chose Sterne
after Retief Goosen (sixth), Ernie Els (seventh), Trevor Immelman (thirteenth), Tim Clark (twenty-first) and Charl Schwartzel (seventy-second) had to decline due to commitments in the Nelson Mandela Invitational, Nedbank Golf Challenge and Alfred Dunhill Championship.
Although not the top-ranked South African players, Sabbatini and Sterne should be a dangerous combination.
Both men are relatively small in stature, but big on grit. They are tenacious competitors with never-say-die attitudes. Combining a similar style of game, Sabbatini and Sterne should complement each other perfectly in the foursome and fourball formats.
Victory with Immelman in 2003
Sabbatini is an old hand at handling the pressure, having represented South Africa from 2002 to 2004. In 2003, he and Trevor Immelman triumphed at Kiawah Island in South Carolina.
The man from KwaZulu-Natal enjoyed enjoyed one of his best seasons on the PGA Tour this year, finishing
twelfth on the final money list while recording his third US PGA win in the Nissan Open.
The 25-year-old Sterne, long hailed as South Africa's next golfing prodigy, established his credentials by dominating South Africa's amateur scene. He became the first South African to win both the junior and senior national Strokeplay and Matchplay titles, came second in the 1999 World Junior Championships, and won the 2001 Indian Amateur.
Wins on three Tours
He debuts in the World Cup in Barbados, owning victories on three Tours, his first at the age of 20 in the Rye Hill Championship on the PGA Europro Tour.
He confirmed his potential by winning his maiden European Tour title at the 2004 Open de Madrid, and capped a superb season with his first victory on home soil when he claimed the 2004 Nashua Masters title on the Sunshine Tour.
Sabbatini and Sterne will be aiming to make it World Cup title number six for South Africa at Sandy Lane's
Resort Country Club in St James.
Past South African team wins
1965 - Gary Player/Harold Henning (Madrid, Spain)
1974 - Bobby Cole/Dale Hayes (Caracas, Venezuela)
1996 - Ernie Els/Wayne Westner (Cape Town, South Africa)
2001 - Ernie Els/Retief Goosen (Gotemba City, Japan)
2003 - Trevor Immelman/Rory Sabbatini (Kiawah Island, South Carolina, USA)
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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