Ken Borland

Kevin Stone grew up in what is now called Gauteng but the popular 55-year-old golfer has now moved to the sea.

Certainly not to retire, but to become director of golf at the Mount Edgecombe Country Club Estate, which is hosting the Sunshine Tour’s prestigious Vodacom Origins of Golf Series this week.

It’s a challenging job looking after the two premier championship courses and all the members, plus this week’s tournament was sprung on Mount Edgecombe at late notice due to unforeseen circumstances with the original host, Durban Country Club.

But Stone still reckons he would rather be in his current job than playing golf.

“I stopped playing professional golf really in 1998 when I went into the club industry and just played part-time. And, honestly, I’m not that keen to race out there and play now. My wife Desiree is the CEO of both the Mount Edgecombe estate and country club, and initially I came and helped out when Micky Hough resigned. But then they asked me to stay and starting in December last year, I am now the director of golf.

“Normally we have six-to-nine months to prepare for a tournament, but when Desiree called me into her office last Friday I thought I was going to get fired! Instead she asked me if we can host the Vodacom Origins of Golf Series. Fortunately I like to keep the course to tour standard week in, week out, so the members can enjoy that sort of quality. We will maybe just speed up the greens a bit, they are normally between 9 and 9.5 and we’ll probably go up to 10.5 for the tournament. We expect some rain to slow it up as well, but if the wind gets up then the greens will be very tricky,” Stone said on Tuesday.

Dominated by the Mount Edgecombe Lake, the aptly-named Lakes Course is 24 years old, while the Vodacom Origins of Golf Series is being played on the 5885-metre The Woods, which dates back to 1935, although it was redesigned in 1992.

“The Woods has been inter-seeded with bent grass and the greens are getting better every year, it’s in good nick at the moment. The Lakes is also a very good course, I actually prefer it a bit. It’s a lot more challenging, tree-lined with lots of water. It’s a very old-school type of course.

“But on The Woods, the pros are going to need to drive it straight. On the par-fives they can get on easily in two because they all just bang it 300 yards these days. Watching them makes me feel like I’ve never played this course before … it’s nice to be young,” Stone laughed.

There are numerous South African golfers competing and excelling overseas, especially in Europe, these days.

And while the winning performances of the likes of Garrick Higgo and Dean Burmester on the European Tour, and Branden Grace, Higgo and Erik van Rooyen on the U.S. PGA Tour understandably hog the limelight, there are many other golfers just trying to make a living on those big tours. South Africa have seven full-time golfers on the main tour in the United States, four of which also regularly play in Europe, alongside 16 other South Africans.

Less well-known is the fact that there are six South African women’s golfers in the top 100 on the Ladies European Tour. And when one compares the prizemoney they win to their compatriots on the men’s tours, the massive pay disparities when it comes to gender become apparent.

Darren Fichardt is 99^th on the European Tour order of merit and has won more than 170 000 euro n seven tournaments this year; Stacy Bregman is 100^th on the Ladies European Tor standings and has won just over 52 500 euro in 11 events.

Even at the top end of the rankings, the story is the same. Justin Harding is 20^th in the Race to Dubai and has earned more than 610 000 euro in 19 starts; Ashleigh Buhai is 21^st on the LET and has won just 93 254 euro.

The majority of South African golfers overseas are not winning titles, they are just trying to accumulate enough money week-by-week to keep playing over there and hopefully get the breakthrough win that secures their card. That challenge is especially hard for the women: On the men’s European Tour this year there is not a single tournament that has a prize pool of less than a million euro; only nine out of 26 LET events reach that benchmark.

The two women’s majors played in Europe – the second of which, the AIG Women’s Open, is being held this weekend at Carnoustie – have a prize fund of 3.8 million euro, which would rank 12^th highest on the men’s tour.

“Playing golf overseas is an expensive sport, especially doing it week-to-week, there are huge overheads if you don’t have help. If it weren’t for my sponsor Investec, I would definitely not be able to represent the country in Europe and maybe inspire the younger generation that it is possible. And you have to go overseas to play better golf, playing against the best in the world can only improve your game.

“In the future, hopefully more youngsters from South Africa can make a good living from golf. It’s a tough sport and a lot of girls are intimidated to play it. We want to make it a sport for everyone and to show that we definitely need to get more women watching us play. But to do that we need more media exposure, it has to be in your face for people to notice,” Bregman told The Citizen.

Of course, the argument that the men enjoy such large paydays because they attract greater viewership and more sponsorship will be made. But part of the reason for their bigger viewership figures is that the men’s game enjoys greater promotion, while not as much effort is made to explain just how skilful women’s golfers are, not relying so much on power games.

For instance, research has shown that women golfers are more accurate from 120 yards in, but those are the sort of in-depth stats that coverage of their sport does not employ to the same extent as the men.

“Our only hope of seeing the gap in prizemoney close is for people to see how good our product is. We should actually be paid the same because we are playing the same courses. We might not have the same power, and somehow that does not seem to have the same pull when it comes to viewership, but we just don’t play golf the same way the top men do.

“It’s about creating awareness for potential sponsors and I definitely think the skill factor should be highlighted. The average golfer plays a totally different game to the men’s pros, but I think the better men’s amateur golfers can relate more to the women’s game. I think our game does have more skill and the more men that watch us play will hopefully lead to things changing,” Bregman says.

But analyses suggest that even if women are at the forefront of public attention and viewership figures, they still end up learning less. According to the Wall Street Journal, in the three years after winning the 2015 World Cup, the U.S. women’s soccer team generated more revenue than the men’s team. But their earnings did not rise, leading to a landmark lawsuit that tackled the gender pay gap. A judge ruled, however, that because the women’s team had previously negotiated a pay deal that was weighted more towards fixed income than perfomrance bonuses, they could only sue for equal working conditions and they came to a settlement with the U.S. Soccer Federation.

Locally, Investec have been at the forefront of efforts to create more transparency around prizemoney in golf and have been pushing for sponsors to support women’s golf so that the sport can follow tennis and athletics in ensuring that there is no major gap in earnings between the top male and female stars.

Readers of Gary Player’s life story will know how much South Africa’s greatest golfer was affected by losing his mother at a young age, but ironically it has been the tragedy that connects him to one of this country’s best rising talents – Garrick Higgo.

Player’s mother Muriel succumbed to cancer in 1943, when he was just eight years old. The last time he saw her was on Christmas Day, two days later she died. Player has said that something broke in him that day and he has been trying to fix it ever since, which partly explains the remarkable passion and tenacity of one of the hardest-working sports stars there has ever been.

Higgo was introduced to golf by his father Guillermo, but in 2008, when he was just nine, the family, which includes two siblings, were involved in a car crash, hit by another vehicle, and his Dad was fatally injured.

“I met Gary Player just after that because we both had a holiday home at Plettenberg Bay and we used to play and practise a lot together, play nine holes in the afternoon. His Mom died when he was eight, which was around the age I was when I lost my Dad. So we connected, it is a real and amazing connection, and it’s been there since before all the good things happened to me.

“It was only when I was around 12 or 13 that I totally understood who Gary Player is. I would be watching the Majors and I would see Gary’s name always popping up. He calls me a lot and he has really helped my game and especially the mental aspects of it,” Higgo says of his remarkable friendship with someone more than sixty years his senior.

It is Higgo who is now playing in the Majors and the lessons Player, who won nine times on golf’s biggest stages, has imparted should stand him in very good stead. The 22-year-old made his Major debut in May at the PGA Championship and made the cut, before really getting to grips with the brutal Kiawah Island course with a 69 in the final round that saw him rise into a tie for 64^th.

In last weekend’s U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, Higgo missed the cut by two strokes, but one should take into account the hectic build-up the Paul Roos Gymnasium product had to that tournament. In a way, Higgo was the victim of his own success as he won the Palmetto Championship the week before, in just his second PGA Tour start.

And with a clearly emotional and overjoyed Player giving Higgo a phone call at the winner’s press conference, the U.S. media understandably had a new sensation to focus on, especially given his three wins in the last year on the European Tour.

“It had an impact because I was very tired mentally, each one of my wins has changed my life and the one on the U.S. PGA Tour the most significantly. My caddy, who is also my best friend, also had to fly back before the U.S. Open because his wife went into labour. So I wasn’t exactly fresh going in, but I played alright and just had a couple of bad bounces.

“I’m learning from each week I play and it made it tough winning the week before the U.S. Open. I didn’t play my best, I was mentally drained, I had a different caddy and I just missed the cut. And I’ve learnt so far in the Majors that you’ve got to have everything working, you have to do everything well. You can’t lose focus, if you are slightly off-line you will be punished.

“But the more I play in the Majors, the better I’ll get. I need to tighten up on my misses and just get more comfortable with everything going on,” Higgo said this week.

Naturally, he knows there is still plenty of room for improvement in his game as well.

“A couple of things in my swing were a bit off so I went back to a draw, that’s the way I like to hit it, I’ve gone back to what is comfortable for me. I’ve also had to work on my short-game technique because the pins are always tucked here in America; I needed to figure out how to get a lot more spin on my chips and get them shorter.

“I wold say my strengths are my mental game, putting and the short game, those are definitely my strongest suits, and my iron play has always been solid. I’m a little streaky off the tee though, I’m generally straight and can hit it a decent distance, but I would like to hit a lot more fairways,” Higgo said.

With arguably the best mental mentor one could have in Player, Higgo certainly seems equipped with the right stuff to keep making waves in world golf. And armed with a simple philosophy, it is understandable why the left-hander has been able to win so quickly at every new rung of the golfing ladder he has climbed.

“I treat every event the same, I don’t make them into big things, whether it’s a Big Easy Tour event or a PGA tournament, and I think that helps mentally. The other guys in a PGA event are obviously going to be better than those in a Big Easy tournament, but I don’t worry about them really, I’m just focused on my own game.”

With the sort of start to his international career Higgo has made, it is the opposition who are surely going to be worrying about him more and more.

Louis Oosthuizen joined the club when it came to South African golfers beaten into second place by Phil Mickelson at a Major championship when the American became the oldest ever golfer to win one of the sport’s four main tournaments with his two-stroke victory in the PGA Championship overnight at Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course.

If it wasn’t bad enough having Tiger Woods hogging most of the Majors in the 2000s, winning 12 of them including beating Ernie Els into second place in both the U.S. Open and the Open Championship in 2000, and winning the 2002 Masters by three strokes over Retief Goosen, Mickelson then beat Els by one stroke in the 2004 Masters and Tim Clark by two strokes at Augusta in 2006.

Oosthuizen was just marginally off his game in the final round of the PGA Championship, while his putter remained his most unresponsive club as he posted a one-over-par 73 in the final round to finish tied-second with American multiple Major winner Brooks Koepka. They each earned $1.05 million dollars.

While Mickelson is celebrating his own place in the annals of history as the oldest ever Major winner, Oosthuizen will be mulling over his fifth runners-up finish in the big four tournaments, having claimed the title in the 2010 Open Championship. But the 38-year-old can take some heart from the fact that Mickelson, who turns 51 on June 16, has finished second 11 times in Majors. But the left-hander has also won six Majors – the PGA twice, the Masters three times and the Open Championship once.

“I feel like I’m playing my heart out to get a second major, and I do know I have the game to do it. This was close. My game wasn’t great on the weekend, but it was better today than yesterday. So I just need to work harder on it to get myself in contention again,” Oosthuizen said after his round.

What shaped up as being a famous day in South African golf history, with three golfers in the top six going into the final round, ended as a disappointment, with only Oosthuizen challenging before once again finishing second-best.

Christiaan Bezuidenhout shot a 77 to slip into a tie for 30^th, while Branden Grace was in a tie for 38^th a shot back after a 78.

Danie van Tonder, in his debut Major appearance, shot 73 in the final round to finish tied-44^th, one shot ahead of Rory McIlroy.

Dean Burmester finished tied-59^th and Garrick Higgo, also on Major debut, shot an excellent 69 in the final round to climb to a tie for 64^th.