Ken Borland

GolfRSA have sought clarity from government over the status of golf courses and clubs when South Africa’s Covid-19 Lockdown is eased to Level III on June 1, after the spread of rumours on social media that while Sunshine Tour professionals will be able to resume competition, golf courses and clubs will remain closed for amateur or recreational golf.

Officials from GolfRSA, which runs all golf in the country and technically even represent the professionals of the Sunshine Tour, are known to have had discussions on Monday afternoon with Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa but will not comment further than the statement they issued prior to that conversation on Monday.

“Following President Ramaphosa’s speech on Sunday night …, GolfRSA – on behalf of the delegation representing the golf industry – is waiting for the Level III Lockdown regulations to be gazetted before making any comment. Meanwhile, we are urgently seeking clarity on golf’s position from government,” the statement read.

The Level III regulations could be published as quickly as Tuesday.

GolfRSA have previously submitted a proposal for the reopening of golf courses and clubs to the minister, which he then took to the Command Council. Insiders have told The Citizen that the submission focused on the obvious reasons for allowing golf to be played, such as the safety of the sport in terms of social distancing, all the studies which indicate it is a valuable source of exercise, and the socio-economic factors. Re-opening courses and clubs would allow more than 40 000 people, many of them vulnerable low-income workers, to return to work. The golf industry as a whole employs more than 250 000 people.

The long suspension of golf has seen eight clubs permanently close their doors and 34 others are considering retrenchments.

In terms of professional golf, the U.S. PGA Tour will kick off with the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, from June 11, but it’s going to be a long wait for the many South Africans on the European Tour, which will restart with the British Masters from July 23. Both tours will return to play without any spectators allowed.

The Sunshine Tour are believed to feel it is more important to get amateur and recreational golf up and running first because the professional game is not keen to play without spectators.

“You have got to understand that you have a debt to society,” the great Gary Player said when asked what message he would give to American golfers playing for millions of dollars every weekend on the U.S. PGA Tour. And then the 84-year-old nine-time Major winner and Grand Slam champion took a potshot at the lack of American golfers playing in the Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City.

The U.S. PGA Tour offered more than $375 million of prizemoney for 46 official events last year, with order of merit winner Brooks Koepka taking home $9,684,006.

The Nedbank Golf Challenge, of which Player is the host, is part of the prestigious Rolex Series on the European Tour and the winner gets $2.5 million, one of the biggest prizes in world golf. But there was only one American in the field last year in David Lipsky, the world number 193 at the time, who plays mostly on the European Tour. In 2018, not a single American accepted the invitation.

“I’m in favour of the guys making as much money as they can but when you consider that I won just $45 000 for winning the PGA Championship in 1972 then it’s fair to say we worked so hard in those days so they could win big money. You’ve got to understand you have a debt to society and so many golfers do a fine job and golf is the greatest catalyst for charitable giving.

“But Sun City offered the biggest prize ever last year and there was not one American who played. They wanted 5-6 million dollars just to play. I would have rowed over from America for that kind of money! I would tell them you are not fulfilling your debt to promote the game that enabled you to live the way you do,” Player said on Thursday night in a webinar hosted by Citadel Investment Services.

South Africa’s Sportsman of the 20^th Century also said to count him amongst those players who have said this year’s Ryder Cup must be played with spectators allowed or be postponed. The biennial match between the United States and Europe is scheduled for September 25-27 at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, but there have been suggestions it will have to be played without galleries, a move which has been rejected by golfers on both sides of the Atlantic.

“The Ryder Cup is a hard call. I never played in it for obvious reasons, but I can understand both sides. The sponsors put in a lot of money and the tournament wouldn’t exist without them, or the media too. Sponsors and the media are the reason why golfers nowadays play for absurd amounts of money.

“But the whole enthusiasm of the Ryder Cup is such that if there was just a deathly silence you wouldn’t want to play. So I’m with the players on this, but my heart bleeds for the sponsors and media. But the tournament can be delayed, rather do that like they’ve done with the U.S. Open and the Masters. Golfers will also have to make sacrifices and play over Christmas or whenever,” Player said.

People may soon be permitted to play golf as the Covid-19 Lockdown regulations are eased, but for professional golfers it is likely that they will only return to competition in the summer.

The massive interruption to global golf will have a ripple effect and South Africa’s major tournaments such as the Nedbank Golf Challenge are now only likely to take place close to the end of the year. Complicating matters is the fact that the Masters is now scheduled to take place from November 12-15, which was when this year’s Sun City mega-event was meant to be held.

“Golf RSA and the PGA have sent a proposal to the minister of sport about opening golf courses for amateur use, but when we will be able to host a professional event, we just don’t know. Golf clubs are going to be a lot stricter when they reopen – things like two-balls only and no caddies – and that proposal doesn’t help us yet,” Thomas Abt, the deputy commissioner of the Sunshine Tour, told The Citizen.

“As far as the Sunshine Tour goes, we need the people element at golf. The golfers will be willing to do their thing behind closed doors, but the sponsors want the camaraderie of the Pro-Am and the hospitality opportunities, so it is very difficult to sell golf without any spectators to them.

“As far as the Nedbank Golf Challenge goes, we are engaging with the European Tour, Nedbank and Sun International, and it looks like we will change the date to a couple of weeks later. That cannot be 100% confirmed though until we see a potential world calendar. The U.S. PGA is meant to start on June 8 and the European Tour is hoping to get back underway in August.

“But they will initially be playing behind closed doors because they have certain brands who are happy to do that. Hopefully here in South Africa we will be all ready to go by the end of the year,” Abt said.

The deputy commissioner said that there is a big push within the Sunshine Tour to make watching golf – either on TV or at the course – more attractive to the younger generation. To that end, they have been running virtual matches between Sunshine Tour pros using a digitised version of Glendower Golf Club on PlayStation’s The Golf Club game.

“The biggest thing is that we have a captive audience that loves pro golf but we’re also looking outside that to a younger viewership. We need to move out of our boundaries, push the boundaries a bit and the public seem to love it. People want to hear how the golfers approach a course like Glendower, they want to see the personalities, what sort of guy Brandon Stone really is for instance.

“Women’s tennis has the youngest viewership globally while golf on TV is currently watched by people aged 55 and over. Which is why we are heavily moving into things like Instagram as well to take golf to a much younger market, which allows for more longevity in terms of support. We do these things for fun but at the end of the day the economic climate shows the importance of them,” Abt said.

A census of the last four International teams to participate in the Presidents Cup shows that anything from six to nine different countries, from three to five continents, have been represented in each edition of the biennial golf match against the United States. Which poses a considerable challenge in terms of creating a team unity between such disparate cultures and languages as Australian, Chinese and Chilean.

Which is why newly-appointed International captain Trevor Immelman has said he is going to lean heavily on the culture created by his predecessor, fellow South African Ernie Els, in the 2021 event at Quail Hollow in North Carolina. Els, faced with the most diverse team in Presidents Cup history, with nine countries represented from five continents, spearheaded the toughest challenge the United States have experienced in the event for many years, the Americans eventually having to come from behind on the last day to win 16-14.

“Though we were unable to deliver Ernie a win at Royal Melbourne last year, the legacy that he established in his time as captain is something I hope to build on moving forward. I can’t wait to continue adding to the platform he created for us. Ernie knew that he needed to find a way to create a family dynamic among our team, and we felt that over the years that might have been what was missing.

“It’s a pretty big hurdle to try and overcome when you have players coming from nine different countries, with their own cultures and languages, in just one week. Ernie really went out of his way to build unity amongst the group and that worked in our favour. That was something he wanted to create for further down the road too. He really felt like our team needed some kind of identity. With the creation of a new International Team logo, that identity was born.

“What he did for us is going to be a turning point for the International team. We have the blueprint that will hopefully lead us to victory, we had amazing chemistry in our team room down in Australia. And it translated on to the golf course, where our guys really did compete as one unit, and we came so close to pulling it off,” Immelman, who was an assistant captain in Melbourne, said in his PGA Tour player diary this week.

Immelman made his name globally by winning the 2008 Masters, beating Tiger Woods by three strokes, but wrist, elbow and back injuries then put his playing career into intermission. He made a comeback on the European Tour and re-entered the top 500 in the world rankings in 2018, but it is his work as a TV analyst that has mostly preserved his high profile. It will also help him in sifting through the talent at his disposal as captain.

“They are literally and figuratively massive shoes for me to fill, but I think we have a nice plan going forward. I’m going to draw on all sorts of different things that I’ve picked up over the years from a leadership standpoint from successful people all over the globe and all walks of life. But we’re going to be having a great time, we’re going to have great communication and there’s going to be a lot of attention to detail.

“In the last two years we’ve had a number of youngsters step up as some of the best golfers in the world. We have a lot of different players starting to play really well, guys who were on the fringes of the team last time around. We had a group of 12 in Melbourne and now I can cast a bigger net and create a group of 30 to 40 golfers, and start to get the camaraderie going,” Immelman said.