Ken Borland

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.

Branden Grace is back at his most beloved Major, reunited with his coach and back in the top 100 of the world rankings as he looks to lead the 11-strong South African challenge at the PGA Championship starting at the Ocean Course on Kiawah Island on Thursday.

Grace has the best history in the tournament of that record South African contingent vying for the famous Wanamaker Trophy, having finished third in 2015 and tied-fourth the following year. Gary Player was the last South African to win the PGA Championship, way back in 1972.

The 32-year-old Grace’s career had been in the doldrums a bit and he lost his father to Covid at the beginning of the year. But Grace rebounded to win the Puerto Rico Open on the U.S. PGA Tour and has made the cut in four of his five events since then, climbing to No.92 in the world rankings, having ended 2020 in 126^th place. He also has his coach Peter Berman with him in South Carolina, and expressed his happiness on social media that they will be able to work together for the first time since last year.

In the golf movie Tin Cup, protagonist Roy McAvoy talks of a course being like a “river full of all manner of disaster, you know, piranhas, alligators, eddies, currents” and the Ocean Course, which was also the venue for the 2012 PGA Championship, has been described as the most difficult layout in recent Major championship history. Measuring nearly 7900 yards, it also features strong coastal winds and cruel slopes.

Hopefully the potential for trauma won’t mar the debut experience of Major golf for South Africans Garrick Higgo, in red-hot form after his two European Tour wins in the Canary Islands, and Danie van Tonder, who has been given an invite after his breakthrough European Tour victory in Kenya.

Louis Oosthuizen is the highest-ranked South African in the field at 31^st in the world rankings, followed by No.41 Christiaan Bezuidenhout. Dylan Frittelli is another South African who regularly competes on the U.S. PGA Tour and is also inside the top-100, while veteran Charl Schwartzel rose 48 places to No.109 after his tied-third finish in last weekend’s Byron Nelson Classic.

Brandon Stone has been doing well on the European Tour lately, while George Coetzee and Erik van Rooyen both enjoyed their best Major showings at the PGA Championship. Dean Burmester, who also won during the European Tour’s Canary Islands swing, is making his PGA Championship debut, having played in two U.S. Opens previously.

Sun City is hoping that luck’s with them this year and they are able to host the Nedbank Golf Challenge, but in the meantime South Africa’s juniors will have the good fortune of playing the Gary Player Country Club in a major event as the new Nedbank Junior Challenge was announced on Wednesday.

The prestigious Nedbank Golf Challenge was not held in 2020 due to Covid and not being able to have crowds in attendance, and tournament director Ken Payet said it was still too early to say whether ‘Africa’s Major’ would be able to take place this year. The European Tour have scheduled the tournament for November 11-14.

“We’ve been having discussions and from the Nedbank and European Tour perspective it is still too early and anything we say would be just speculation. We’re obviously hoping to put it on this year, but it depends on the regulations in place. By the end of June or July we will make a call, but there are just too many moving parts at the moment in terms of the regulations and everyone waiting for the third wave,” Payet said on Wednesday.

The good news though is that the country’s top juniors will get the whole famous Gary Player Country Club experience from May 3-5, with the winner of the event getting to be a part of the Nedbank Golf Challenge as an observer in the inner circle.

The 54-hole tournament will offer world amateur ranking points on a par with the SA Amateur Championship and the 78-man field will be drawn from the top-50 on the GolfRSA rankings as well as giving exposure to an excellent array of development golfers, through the SA Golf Development Board.

The winner will receive a replica of the famous crystal-ball Nedbank Golf Challenge senior trophy and might even be able to play a practice round with one of the players in the field for the professional showpiece.

Grant Hepburn, the CEO of GolfRSA, said there has already been an excellent response to the tournament.

“Entries have been open for one week and we are well over-subscribed already with 86 applications, so we will have the cream of the crop playing. We’re very excited to be taking our top amateurs to such an iconic venue. We all grew up watching the Nedbank Golf Challenge and it is such a big part of the South African sporting scene. This event is important for us to keep producing golfers at the highest level,” Hepburn said.

The Sunshine Ladies Tour returns to action on Wednesday with the Cape Town Ladies Open at Royal Cape Golf Club, giving South Africa’s women professional golfers some much needed-competitive action, and leading contender Lejan Lewthwaite is hoping to negotiate the next six weeks of action with considerably more ease than when she tried to do her job last year.

Due to Covid, there was only one Sunshine Ladies Tour event last year after the SA Open in March, the Investec Royal Swazi Open in October, for South Africa’s women professionals to earn a living. Lewthwaite, being one of the top women’s golfers in the country and a three-time winner on tour, is at least able to get invitations to play overseas. But even that did not work out as planned.

“I actually caught Covid in June but then I kept testing positive and then negative and then positive again, so it was very stressful and I couldn’t play the number of tournaments I wanted to overseas. There were plenty of false positives in those tests, but the authorities kept thinking that I had recontracted Covid. But my last pro tournament was in November in Spain.

“Since then I’ve just played a bit in Bushveld Tour events and with the men on the IGT Tour. I’ve just been trying to get back into competitive mode again, but it’s been a very difficult year. I’ve had to have lots of patience and just stick to my guns; there has been lots of practise, which does get quite frustrating at times. We’ve been out of proper competition for so long that I can’t wait to get those competitive juices flowing again,” Lewthwaite told The Citizen on Tuesday.

There is no substitute for tournament play and there was a definite air of tremendous excitement at Royal Cape on Tuesday, and not just because of the perfect, still day, for the 60 golfers who played their final practice rounds before teeing off the new season on Wednesday.

There will be four other events on the Sunshine Ladies Tour this season – at Glendower, Gary Player Country Club at Sun City, Soweto Country Club and Fancourt – before the circuit concludes with the Investec SA Women’s Open at Westlake Golf Club from May 13.

“We’re all extremely excited, it’s a great schedule ending with the Investec SA Open in May and a good stretch of tournaments before that on really nice courses. Personally I love all the courses we’ll be playing on and we all feel very blessed to be playing again. So thanks to the Sunshine Tour, the Women’s Professional Golf Association and Investec,” Lewthwaite said.