Ken Borland

The Sunshine Tour has spent much of the Covid-19 Lockdown trying to mitigate the dire financial strain put on many of its members and most especially their caddies, while also showing solidarity with the amateur game and all its stakeholders, who have been far more severely affected by the closure of golf courses.

But the Sunshine Tour has also devoted their time in Lockdown to ensuring that they can grow the game further once normality returns, by boldly pursuing new markets, especially through the digital space. Their groundbreaking Virtual Golf Challenge reached out to potential new fans and gave their sponsors exposure at the same time.

In the absence of live golf, fans were able to watch several head-to-head challenges between professional golfers, culminating in a knockout final featuring eight contestants on June 6-7, playing for R6500 of prizemoney. Rookie Nikhil Rama claimed a comfortable three-shot win over Heinrich Bruiners in the final.

International campaigners Brandon Stone, Haydn Porteous, Justin Harding and Oliver Bekker all took part in the series at some stage.

And, most importantly, during the whole series viewers were able to interact with the professionals in a way that would be virtually impossible in normal tournament golf.

Not only could they hear the banter between the golfers, who maintained their usual competitive spirit, but also ask them questions ranging from what are the best Open Championship courses (Carnoustie received a few votes), who are the naughtiest pros on tour (Andy Sullivan was mentioned), the longest hitters (between Wilco Nienaber and James Hart du Preez, confirming the stats) and what was the best chirp ever heard out on the course?*

The Virtual Golf Challenge took place on PlayStation’s The Golf Club game and the front nines of Glendower Golf Club and Royal Johannesburg and Kensington’s East Course, as well as Soweto Country Club for the final, were especially recreated for the series.

“We wanted to create something fun for our fans and they certainly seemed to enjoy watching the pros play these games. The banter was great fun and the viewers could see what type of guy a Brandon Stone or a Jared Harvey is, it gives the fan an insight into their personality. The public loved it, the players said they were just as nervous before their rounds and they were very much on-board in terms of it being serious competition. What more is sport?

“We created the virtual tour to be fun, but the biggest thing was that we have a captive audience that loves pro golf but we need to look outside that at younger viewers. We need to start thinking out of the box, push the boundaries a bit. It’s most important to attract the youth and women’s tennis has the youngest viewership globally, while golf on TV is mostly watched by people aged 55 and over,” Thomas Abt, the deputy commissioner of the Sunshine Tour, said.

“That’s why we’ve gone heavily into things like Instagram as well, because that reaches a much younger market, which gives you longevity in terms of support. The Virtual Tour was for fun but at the end of the day in this economic climate, it’s important what we can get out of it – which is speaking to a completely different market, people who might not ever go to a tournament or watch golf on TV. Our sponsors, and those of the players, have obviously not been able to promote their brands as much during Lockdown and we’ve been able to give them and our partners some value.

“The virtual tour definitely gained motion, it has shown us a positive way going forward and I’m just surprised that no other sport in South Africa really tried something like that in Lockdown. It was fun and something different, a new way of doing things, and the idea was to make ourselves more relevant. Hopefully those who saw it will say it was fun to watch and now they’ll want to go and watch the golfers in real life,” Abt said.

One of the biggest attractions of the Virtual Golf Challenge is that it offers an insight into the game plans of the golfers faced with certain holes which are instantaneously recognisable on the program thanks to the superb job done by the techies building the digital courses.

And the golfers enjoyed the realism of the game and just how tough it was, feeding into their competitive juices.

“Lockdown was like all of us sitting in our cages and champing at the bit for any opportunity that reminded you of competitive golf. Haydn Porteous and I jumped at the opportunity to play each other and we’ve now competed against each other through junior golf, to the amateur champs, at professional level and now virtually!” Brandon Stone said.

“The actual playing of the game was tricky, especially around the greens, and it mimics the toughness of golf quite well. After many hours of playing the game I can now grasp how it feels, understand the frustration, of most golfers. It was quite difficult to play technically, even though it doesn’t mimic the actual swing as much, but from a golf strategy point of view it was very similar to the real game. We had similar game-plans as we would in real life.”

It’s undeniable though that the Virtual Golf Challenge did not have the same heat of battle as one gets coming down the back nine on Sunday afternoon and Oliver Bekker, the 2017/18 Sunshine Tour Players’ Player of the Year, acknowledged that pro golfers would probably have to stay out of the heat of the kitchen if they were to take on proper gamers.

“Internationally, gaming has been around for a while and the games earn millions of dollars per year. But it’s a whole new thing for us and if it had to come down to golfers just being able to play Online, being a pro golfer would definitely not mean you’re a great Online golfer. It’s completely different.

“But I’m glad the Sunshine Tour are being innovative, they put something out that showcased professional golf and it didn’t really matter what we shot, it shows that something is still going on in South African golf. And the game they used is a lot more realistic than some of the others in which Rory McIlroy shoots 56 every time! The Golf Club almost feels real, it’s more up to the standard of real golf,” Bekker said before his match against Justin Harding, which he won to go through to the final weekend.

For realism in the world of virtual golf, however, nothing beats what the outstanding European Tour digital and social media team put together – the BMW Trackman Invitational.

Powered by the Trackman golf simulator, this series was a true test of golf played on digital versions of major courses like Wentworth, St Andrews and Valderrama.

By choosing tough settings in terms of factors like the wind and speed of greens, the golfers, hitting actual practice balls into their nets at home, had to shape shots to avoid the same obstacles that are out on those famous courses in real life. The auto-putt function that meant golfers were given putts within 2.5 metres and sometimes longer was annoying, while one wonders how troubled they were by bad lies given that they were hitting off a mat at home, with the simulator then tracking all the details of the club and ball data. At a glance though, it was difficult to differentiate between it and real golf.

The equipment is extremely expensive – ranging from $20 000 to $50 000 – but it does seem to be the new toy of choice for professional golfers.

The deep pockets of BMW and the wonderful exposure Trackman have received made possible what must have been a very expensive undertaking for the European Tour, but Abt said the Sunshine Tour are looking to follow suit.

“We’re very close to doing something similar, testing is going on in that sphere. But it’s not just about the playing of golf for us, it’s also very important for the fans to get to know the players better. The Virtual Tour may not have been real golf, but it was a platform for our professionals to present themselves,” Abt said.

Justin Sampson is the CEO of S-Factor Sponsorship, the digital PR company running campaigns for the Sunshine Tour, and he has been delighted with the success of the Virtual Golf Challenge.

“We’ve tried to engage social media across the board, from the virtual tour to Robbie Kruse’s Out of Bounds player interviews on Instagram, that included an episode with Louis Oosthuizen. The Virtual Tour had 600 000 viewers in the first six weeks, the majority of those from Facebook, then Instagram and then Twitter. We had 4500 people watching live on YouTube on Sunday afternoons. Those are the kind of numbers you get on SuperSport Channels 6-8.

“We wanted to reach the younger market, position the Sunshine Tour in a different market, not the traditional platforms. It was all part of a bigger strategy and nobody had even heard of Covid back then. But we had to adapt to tough circumstances and we’ve grown a new base, which I think is pretty cool. What the European Tour has done is pretty cool too and we copy each other a bit,” Sampson said.

The rise of eSports, which is now a billion dollar industry globally, means the line between virtual and real sports is going to blur, offering another big commercial platform for sports organisations. And while virtual golf is unlikely to ever replace the real thing, it could become more mainstream.

As Brandon Stone pointed out, if a golfer has never seen a course before he or she can gain valuable insight from the digital version and the fact that so many pro golfers now carry around their own tracking devices and simulator shows how useful a tool it can be in coaching.

*Best chirp ever sidebar

The diminutive Keenan Davidse, light in weight but heavy in game, was playing in the Zone VI amateur championships and was up against a big, burly Zimbabwean.

His opponent tried a bit of sledging on the first tee by saying “How’s a small little guy like you going to hit the ball far enough to beat me?”

Davidse said nothing but laced his first drive miles past the Zimbabwean. They walked to their balls and when Davidse reached his, he turned back to the Zimbabwean and shouted “How small do I look now?!”

Amateur golfers were set free from the chains of the Covid-19 Lockdown seven weeks ago and now the professionals look set to return to work in three weeks’ time, in a bio-bubble.

The Sunshine Tour is set to resume on August 19 and tournaments will initially be restricted to just the Johannesburg area.

Hopefully that will set off a chain reaction and the Nedbank Golf Challenge, with some talk of it being cancelled, takes place in all its glory as scheduled in early December to crown a tumultuous year, followed by the South African Open in January.

“We’re hoping to get the professionals started again around August 19, we’ll make a final decision next week once all the medical regulations have been gazetted,” Selwyn Nathan, the commissioner of the Sunshine Tour, told Saturday Citizen on Friday. “The IGT Tour and the Big Easy Tour are also hoping to get underway by the end of the month. At the moment the Sunshine Tour can only be played in Johannesburg.”

Killarney Country Club will be the first to make the daring plunge into professional golf in the time of Covid-19 and the Sunshine Tour are hoping to stage five events over seven weeks. There will be a two-week break after the first three tournaments to allow for anyone who falls sick to quarantine and at least be able to play in the last two events.

The tournaments will be held Wednesday to Friday to allow the golf clubs to be open for the amateurs over the weekend, allowing them to make valuable revenue.

Golfers from all over the country will be allowed to take part, but they will have to be responsible for logging their own health checks for 14 days before a tournament and will also be responsible for their caddies and all risk mitigation arrangements for them.s Three sponsors have apparently already lined up for the first batch of tournaments and the mini-tour will be streamed live across both Sunshine Tour and DStv platforms.

GolfRSA chief executive Grant Hepburn on Friday extended an olive branch to all those in the golf industry who have been without work and frustrated golfers unable to play, saying the organisation’s patient approach to government had paid off as clubs and courses can now open for both amateurs and professionals.

The Department of Sports, Arts and Culture announced on Friday that any member of a federation, agency, club or body may begin playing golf again from Saturday, subject to certain regulations. Clubs need to complete the Confirmation of Compliance Document and submit it to GolfRSA before they can open their facilities.

“These have been incredibly difficult times with the stress of Lockdown and the number of jobs lost, and we have been aware of the frayed tempers and frustrations. We have been in the same boat with friends and colleagues losing work. But we just had to be patient, we knew government were listening to us and they had given us assurances. But it’s been a very complex time and a massive challenge for golf bodies.

“But we believed in the process we were following with the Department, they were always extremely positive and the whole way through they engaged with us in the right way. We wanted to do the right thing and we needed to wait for the new directives. The most important priority is to save lives and mitigate the risk, and the time it has taken us has allowed us to prepare and put things in place at the clubs,” Hepburn said on Friday.

The CEO warned however that golfers could not just rush out on Saturday and expect everything to be back to normal; the golf industry, which contributes R48 billion to the South African economy, would take time to become a well-oiled machine again.

“The job is not yet done, this is not about celebrating. It’s a step in the right direction but there are still many people involved in golf who still can’t put food on their table. So I hope people continue to support clubs and I know our golfers and clubs will be responsible when it comes to the scanning and the monitoring process. Through the HealthDocs app we’ve bought for all clubs, information can be sent back to government at the push of a button.

“We need to control the numbers of golfers and the times they arrive and leave, but it’s time to get busy now with saving golf clubs through the safe return of golfers, which will generate the income for them to survive and save thousands of jobs, especially of those in the vulnerable sector, which makes up 85% of the industry. We know our clubs can comply and sport can help government because exercise is good at reducing comorbidities,” Hepburn said.

The Soweto Country Club, the flagship of the Sunshine Tour’s development programme, is under threat due to the continued prohibition on golf, deputy commissioner Thomas Abt admitted on Thursday.

Soweto Country Club was designed by Gary Player and built in 1974, but fell into disrepair before a major refurbishment turned it into an iconic course in South Africa’s most famous township. Sunshine Tour commissioner Selwyn Nathan spearheaded the fundraising effort that saw both local and overseas corporates, the government and golfers themselves contribute to the revamp of a 6560-metre parklands layout that holds a special place in the heart of Black golfers and the Soweto community at large. The championship course hosted the Joburg Ladies Open in March 2019, an international event co-sanctioned by the Ladies European Tour.

But now the continued success of this incredible project is in question because Soweto Country Club, like the majority of golf clubs in South Africa, is in a dire financial situation due to being closed for the last 10 weeks as government imposed a Lockdown to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Soweto Country Club is absolutely threatened,” Abt said on a Sunshine Tour virtual press conference on Thursday. “One has to tip the hat to Selwyn Nathan, who championed the revamp and got funding from various tours and businesses around the world. But the club needs a sustainable platform and maintenance of the course is critical. We’ve had to re-evaluate maintenance and reduce the number of staff employed because there are no rounds of golf, no food being sold by caterers and no beverages being bought to bring in money.

“So the sooner golf clubs can reopen the better, it’s a very unfortunate situation and we’ve had to put plans in place to try and save Soweto Country Club. It’s been a tough time for GolfRSA but they have put their best foot forward and had positive discussions with the Minister, the Department of Sport and his advisors. We’ve had constant engagement on almost a daily basis,” Abt said.

Much of that engagement has been centred around trying to get government to better understand the dynamics of how golf works in South Africa, with the decision to allow professional golf to resume not having any impact without the clubs and amateur game being allowed to follow suit.

“In our discussions we’ve been trying to understand the reasons why we can’t play golf and we’ve also tried to help them understand better how the Lockdown applies to golf and Grant Hepburn [GolfRSA CEO] has engaged them on how the sport works in this country: In order for the professional game to take place, the amateur game and their facilities have to open up first and then the pros can.

“Our country seems to have it the other way round, but the amateur game supports the professional game and that message seems to have been absorbed now. In the meantime we’ve asked our professionals not to put any pressure on facilities to open. So they’re not able to do anything just yet, but the clubs and ranges have been closed for more than 60 days so we can wait a few more days to play golf again legitimately,” Abt said.