Ken Borland

HAZYVIEW, Mpumalanga (3 September, 2026) – The 29th edition of the Hornbill Classic will be held at the Kruger Park Lodge on Friday and Saturday, with the leading golf tournament in the Lowveld once again attracting numerous golfers from all over South Africa.

The two-day tournament is a four-ball alliance, played on the marvellous Kruger Park Lodge Golf Course, which is a Legacy Hotels and Resorts property. The field of 128 golfers will be tackling the 6100m, par-72 course with an array of prizes on offer thanks to the generosity of the tournament’s many sponsors.

The highlight in terms of the prize list has to be the ingenious Omoda C5 crossover vehicle on offer as the hole-in-one prize for the 194m par-three fifth hole, sponsored by Jaecoo Mbombela.

With spring well underway in the Lowveld, Kruger Park Lodge Golf Club representative Pierre van Nieuwenhuizen says the course, which was designed by golfing legend Gary Player back in 1992, is in superb condition for a weekend of quality, competitive golf.

“The course is playing magnificently well at the moment and the one thing that has really come on in leaps and bounds are the greens. Historically they have been quite slow, but now they are quick because we have removed a lot of the thatching build-up on the greens.

“We had a bit of rain not so long ago, so the course is soft and with the greens playing so well, I think this weekend’s layout will be the best the Hornbill Classic golfers will have played on, they’re going to be blown out of the water,” Van Nieuwenhuizen said this week.

Apart from the wonderful hole-in-one prize from Jaecoo Mbombela, successful golfers will get way more than just a pat on the back, with wonderful prizes on offer from suppliers like Srixon, Cleveland, Global Golf, most of the Legacy properties around the country and safari companies in the Lowveld, including elephant interactions.

Other sponsors involved in the tournament are MET, STN, CSG and Hi-Tec.

Defending champions Pieter Burger, the Kruger Park Lodge GC club captain, and the Srixon and Cleveland team will be back to defend their title. Renowned entertainer Piet Pompies, who is the MC and chief entertainment at the two prizegiving dinners, has also entered a four-ball.

The challenge from the rest of the field will be anything but lame however, as winning the Hornbill Classic, which was started in 1997 by Frikkie Levendal and has only not been held in 2020 when Covid struck, is high up on the bucket list of many Lowveld golfers and others from as far afield as Cape Town.

Kruger Park Lodge will also be unveiling a new fleet of golf carts on the opening day of the Hornbill Classic.

It seems a lot of people owe Faf de Klerk an apology. We are all used to seeing the blonde-haired scrumhalf dashing all over the field looking more like a loose cannon than a guided missile at times, but you have to hand it to the 29-year-old for knowing the laws of the game better than most.

And that includes Matthew Carley, the referee for last weekend’s match between the Wallabies and the Springboks who gave De Klerk a yellow card for playing the halfback from an offsides position at a ruck inside the South African 22. Incorrectly as it turns out.

That’s according to no less of an authority than Nigel Owens, the man who has refereed more Tests than anyone else. On this week’s Whistle Watch video for WorldRugby (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsmXBuDGEps), Owens said because De Klerk was bound in the ruck, on his feet and did not attempt to slap the ball out of opposite number Nic White’s hands but just played his arm, he was onsides and should not have been deemed to have done anything illegal.

“My yellow card was disappointing and it put the team under pressure, but I honestly don’t think it was a yellow card. I clearly played the arm and not the ball, which to my understanding is fine and I would do the same thing again. The same with Willie le Roux’s yellow card, he was trying to intercept the pass, it’s not as if we were doing anything stupid.

“I think our discipline has actually been pretty decent, there have just been a few errors when we have gone off-system. We just need to be a bit more sharp and in the referee’s head a bit more. We know we can’t concede a lot of penalties against the All Blacks or we will really struggle. But the last five times we have played against New Zealand they have been close games,” De Klerk said.

Returning to recent history in the 100^th Test between the two great rivals is perhaps the first thing the Springboks need to do in Townsville on Saturday because De Klerk feels they moved away from the strategies that made them the No.1 side in the world in the two successive losses to Australia.

“Maybe we strayed a little away from how we normally play and that led to errors. We were forcing things a bit and our game-drivers tried to play when it was not on. We fell into the trap of maybe overplaying too much, which puts our forwards under strain. We know we need to be better at that.

“As a team, our main focus is on just getting back on track and hopefully stay in contention to win the Rugby Championship. But we know how to play against the All Blacks and how to capitalise on their weak points. In our last game, at the World Cup, it was basically two kicks that we did not handle, which gave them turnover attack and they scored, that’s when they flourish,” De Klerk said.