Ken Borland

Match number 14 in the first round of the African Bank Championship at Glendower Golf Club on Wednesday featured regular congratulations all round with 14 birdies and an eagle being collected by the three-ball and Martin Rohwer claiming the tournament lead with a seven-under-par 65.

While Rohwer provided seven birdies in a faultless round, colleague Danie van Tonder was no slouch either as he posted a 67 that included five birdies and an eagle at the par-five 13^th. Merrick Bremner was the third member of the group and was unfortunate by all accounts to finish one-over-par with just two birdies.

Port Elizabeth’s Lyle Rowe was alone in second place after shooting a 66 that included a double-bogey at the par-three third but also nine birdies, five of them in a row from the 11^th hole, his second of the day.

“Playing with Danie you just see good shots all the time and you get into a great rhythm. I always seem to play well when I’m with him. Mez [Bremner] was hitting great shots too but unfortunately just couldn’t score. But I started well and played solid the whole round. Glendower is an awesome course and if you hit the fairways today then you could really go for the flags.

“I missed a few opportunities early on but I stayed patient and was able to capitalise later on. It was a bit surreal because at last week’s Rise Up Series event at Killarney, the wind was really blowing but this morning you did not have to worry about that at all. The key was driving well and in winter now the ball runs and then you’re hitting wedges in, whereas last week was more of a second-shot course,” Kloof Country Club’s Rohwer, who turned 27 earlier this week, said.

Rowe said the key to his fine round was putting the ball in just the right place off the tee.

“The fairways slope quite a bit here, so you need to hit the ball on a certain side especially when it’s running so well. The bunkers are also well-placed, but if you can fly them then the ball releases down the fairway quite a lot. So if you drive well then you can score well,” the 33-year-old Rowe said.

For artistic delight though, there was much to appreciate in the splendid six-birdie 67 produced by 19-year-old Jayden Schaper, leaving him tied for third with Van Tonder, Heinrich Bruiners and Oliver Bekker.

“It was a good, solid first round, I’m happy, but I did leave a few out there. My iron play was pretty decent and I hit a lot of greens, but missed a lot of putts from inside six feet. If you hit the ball decently and get in the right places on the green then you can really score,” Schaper said.

Contrary to what many may believe given the divisive, awful state of the Cricket South Africa Board, the Proteas’ ‘changeroom’ is actually quite a happy, unified premises at present according to two Black members of the squad who attended the culture camp that ended last weekend.

While the Proteas are unlikely to sit in an actual changeroom in the near future due to the Covid-19 pandemic, they did spend last week together in Skukuza in a culture camp, which by all accounts was time well spent strengthening the bonds within the team, especially given all the ugliness and bitterness that characterises the administration of the game at the moment.

“We are in a good space and we were even before the camp. But it was a nice exercise for us to all get together and discuss the way forward. Various things were discussed, whatever people felt they needed to talk about,” one Black Protea told The Citizen on Monday.

“The culture camp was good, it was all about the team and what with everything happening at CSA, that’s all we can focus on. There were lots of good, honest chats and when you’re losing, any issue seems to be magnified. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but the platform is there. Team culture is the big thing and we want to drive that not just at national level but domestically too,” a Black African Protea told The Citizen.

And, vitally, it is the players themselves who have been put in charge of ensuring there is a healthy culture within the side. That culture will also play an important role in ensuring that disaffected players feel empowered to speak out without worrying about losing their place in the team.

“Management wanted the players to drive it and nobody was pushed towards having a certain belief. It’s not about being comfortable in the team but about a player being able to say he feels hard done by. It’s important to have a platform to speak about those things and not be judged. In the past players were worried about their position in the team if they spoke out.

“We are trying to drive a culture where nothing will be held against you. For instance, I can only judge by my experience and if I’ve had good experiences with Mark Boucher as coach, it’s not for me to say that others are wrong if they say they have not had good experiences. We have a template now at least and we will continue to work on it. Win or lose that culture must still be driven by the players,” the Black African said on Monday.

Darren Fichardt birdied the last hole for a six-under-par 64 and a one-stroke victory in the Betway Championship at Killarney Country Club on Friday and said he was grateful for the return of butterflies in the stomach after five months without any competitive golf.

Fichardt’s 64 was the lowest round of the tournament and saw him sign for a three-under-par total of 207, one ahead of fellow veteran Ulrich van den Berg, who himself had a birdie putt on 18 for the tie and a playoff, but it shaved the hole from 12 feet out.

The 45-year-old Fichardt holed out from eight feet on the last for his sixth birdie of the day and his 18^th Sunshine Tour title as the Betway Championship launched the new Rise Up Series that marks a return for professional golf.

“I’m very happy to win and it’s just awesome to have those competitive golf butterflies in the stomach again after five months on the couch. Going into the final round six shots behind it’s just a case of whatever happens, happens. It’s a case of all or nothing. My tee-shot on 18 was a bit short, so I had to keep my approach under the trees, it was a bit low, but it helped because with a high floater you never know how it’s going to bounce.

“At the start of the day I was missing short putts for birdie and getting frustrated. With the scoring system now after Lockdown you can see all the scores all the time and I saw how my good friend Jaco van Zyl was burning up the course with a 65. So I thought I better start getting some birdies and to get three straight around the turn was good because this is a tough course,” Fichardt said after claiming R95 100 for the win.

Overnight leader Alex Haindl fell down the final classification with a two-over-par 72, finishing in a tie for third. Two birdies on the front nine kept him neck-and-neck with Anton Haig, who eagled the fifth, but successive bogeys at the seventh and eighth saw Haindl slip and he came home in 37.

Haig collapsed on the back nine with five bogeys and a double-bogey on the par-three 17^th when he was short of the green, but struggled to get out of a grass bunker.

Jaco Prinsloo and Ruan Korb shared third place with Haindl on one-under-par. Prinsloo was in a share of the lead but bogeyed the last two holes.

Fichardt said it was a brutally tough return to action for the Sunshine Tour golfers, likening the course, which was dry with greens like ice-rinks, to a U.S. Open layout.

“It was frustrating because it’s a short track but the greens were tricky with the lines difficult to read and a lot of short putts missed. It was like playing in the U.S. Open. The first day was really cold and windy and I would have been happy with eight-over never mind three-over-par. The second round [70] was a bit better and then today was much better. “I realised today that you just have to get the ball into play here, you have to position yourself. It was definitely experience that carried me through today, after I was a bit more aggressive in the first two rounds,” Fichardt said.

Having attended a private school in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal, I’m as used to the accusations of my alma mater being stuck-up as I am to the reality that in national terms, we are pretty low down the pecking order in terms of schoolboy rugby.

Barring the odd golden periods, the private schools generally struggle to compete with the likes of your Grey College, Paul Roos, Paarl Gym, Affies and Paarl Boys’ High. But where their contribution is proportionally greater is in providing Black players for the pipeline.

And perhaps this is one of the key reasons a thriving schoolboy scene does not translate into greater success for our Junior Springboks side. There has been a lot of angst expressed in the last week over their performances on their tour of the United Kingdom – they were hammered by England and could only snatch a last-minute win over Wales.

The displays did not engender much confidence that South Africa can compete for the honours in the World Rugby U20 Championship that starts in Argentina early next month. It’s a tournament which the Junior Springboks have not won since 2012 and they have not appeared in the final since 2014.

It’s not as if they’re finishing at the bottom of the log either, though, with South Africa having finished third three times in the last four years and fourth once. But given the widely-held belief that we have the strongest schools rugby system in the world, there’s the lingering feeling that we should be doing better.

The problem is the advantages our schoolboy behemoths have in terms of strength, power and pace don’t last through into the senior ranks. Winning at all costs in the highly competitive schools scene means physical characteristics are relied upon and developed, to the detriment of skills. At senior professional level, everyone is pretty much on a par physically thanks to the scientific advances in conditioning, and South Africa loses its advantage.

This mentality also means South Africa’s great rugby schools have been ignoring their responsibility towards the pipeline of our rugby through their reluctance to embrace the need to develop more Black talent. It is time those top-10 schools become more transformed in their recruitment and in the teams they put out on to the field week in, week out.

Quotas or targets have been in place in our national teams for a long time now, and our top rugby schools really need to get with the program. That’s if they really have the national interest at heart and are truly preparing their pupils for the real South Africa outside their secluded cloisters.

Most of the Black players in the Junior Springboks system come from private schools, but I would love to see those great establishments mentioned above push more previously disadvantaged players through their outstanding rugby systems, which can only see better players being produced. I am pleased to hear that Grey College are planning big changes in this regard.

Quotas are obviously controversial and are not a perfect tool. Personally I don’t like them, but I liken them to elephant culling.

Elephants are my favourite animal and I cannot stand the thought of them being killed. But I also recognise the need for culling because if their populations in game reserves are left unchecked, elephants destroy their environment leading to the deaths of both themselves and many other creatures.

The fact that elephants are confined to game reserves is a man-made problem, therefore man has the responsibility to find a solution. Likewise, Apartheid was a man-made problem and quotas seem to be the best solution on the table right now to undo the damage.

Given how long we have waited for the Springboks to comprise just 50% players of colour, I shudder to think what would have happened if quotas were not in force.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-gauteng/20190504/282467120320394