Ken Borland

DULLSTROOM, Mpumalanga – The ability of golf to be an agent for good both in terms of communities and individuals is well-known.

The Vodacom Origins of Golf Series is into its 18^th season, and in that time it has influenced so many lives and communities for the better. But there is someone playing in the Highland Gate ProAm event this week who has been touched by the game in a special way.

David Kau is known for being one of South Africa’s most popular stand-up comedians and he has been an MC at the ProAm dinner for the Vodacom Origins of Golf Series before.

But the 18-handicapper has never actually played in the event before Tuesday and his excitement was palpable before his round. Mostly because, as he put it, he has “fallen in love” with golf.

A lot of that love comes from the fact that golf helped him through the toughest of times during the Covid pandemic; as an entertainer, he was particularly hard-hit.

“I only started playing golf three years ago, but now I’m like a mad man when it comes to the game,” Kau says. “During Covid I did a lot of social media work with my 1.4 million followers across platforms, and I kind of survived.

“But there was never a live audience, so it’s not the same. I refuse to do stand-up comedy in front of a laptop because you never know what people are doing on the other side – cooking or breastfeeding or just avoiding the boss.

“But golf mentally helped me so much when I was not making any money. Those four-to-five hour walks did a lot of good to me. It’s crazy, I’ve played eight times in the last two weeks because I have fallen in love with golf.

“Mentally it has done a lot for me and I’m also walking seven or eight kilometres so I don’t need gym, unless I go do some weights so my drives can be a bit longer,” Kau laughed.

As a comedian, Kau is aware that the smile on the face is not always indicative of the struggles going on in the interior of a person. Mental health issues are close to his heart, and he recognises the strain that formerly-disadvantaged Black professionals can be under as they try to make it in a highly-competitive industry.

“I’ve done a lot of mental health work and before Covid I started getting involved with online therapists, doing podcasts and things. There is definitely a mental health connection to golf.

“Not many of us play better when we’re worried about something, and for Black professionals it’s even more difficult. And you’re on your own out on the course, your coach or psychologist can’t walk on and help you.

“These are guys who have to use public transport just to train, getting into a taxi with a golf bag. Mentally it’s amazing what sport people go through, but they can get adrenaline from the fans. But some of them play better with a big crowd and others get the jitters,” Kau said.

Although making his Vodacom Origins of Golf Series debut on Tuesday, Kau has played in other ProAms before, and certainly did not have the jitters around the magnificent Highland Gate layout, which provides a stern test nestled inside the Steenkampsberg mountains of Mpumalanga. He and veteran Sunshine Tour pro Jaco van Zyl were four-under-par and inside the top-20 after the first round.

South Africans who love both their cricket and their rugby will recognise the similarities between what national coaches Mark Boucher and Jacques Nienaber have been doing with selection lately, and the Proteas mentor will probably have nine of his 15-man squad for the T20 World Cup in two-and-a-half months time already settled.

It was a typically ballsy call by Boucher to keep the same XI that were slaughtered in the first T20 against England for the second match, but it paid off as they kept the series alive with a highly-impressive all-round showing in Cardiff.

By resting players such as Aiden Markram, Rassie van der Dussen, Dwaine Pretorius and Anrich Nortje, Boucher has almost been fielding a second-string outfit, much as Springbok coach Nienaber did for the second Test against Wales.

But he will now know that explosive batsmen like Rilee Rossouw and Tristan Stubbs need to be part of his squad for the T20 World Cup in Australia, as does Lungi Ngidi (if there was any doubt). A player like Andile Phehlukwayo has been given a fair chance to also showcase his strengths, as well as his weaknesses.

Boucher will still, nevertheless, face some really tough selection decisions.

Reeza Hendricks, who seems to attract criticism as unfairly as Willie le Roux does, has justified his selection for the tour to England with wonderful back-to-back half-centuries, but will he be in the World Cup squad? The 32-year-old has really sped up his scoring rate in the two T20s against England, lifting his career stats to an average of 27.58 and a strike-rate of 124.71.

The other contenders for the opening batsman slot alongside Quinton de Kock are the injured Temba Bavuma (average 26.76, SR 120.60), Rassie van der Dussen (38.14 & 130.37) and Rossouw (35.58 & 144.25).

Will Boucher and the selectors be brave (or foolish) enough to leave out the appointed captain, especially given how important Bavuma is to the transformation agenda?

I have not mentioned Markram in this conundrum because he will be going as a middle-order batsman who is averaging 39.20 with a strike-rate of 147 and is third on the ICC rankings. He also provides the Proteas with a sixth bowler, which I still believe is crucial.

Van der Dussen is the next best South African in 10^th place and should surely be on the plane to Australia given how useful his ability to bat just about anywhere will be.

South Africans will fondly recall the exploits of their famous fast bowlers Down Under, but the nature of current T20 cricket will probably dictate that only three frontline pacemen will be chosen for the World Cup – Kagiso Rabada, Ngidi and Nortje.

Pretorius – remember he was South Africa’s joint leading wicket-taker with Nortje in last year’s T20 World Cup – and Phehlukwayo, who has taken 44 wickets in 37 matches, will probably edge out Wayne Parnell for the all-rounder berths.

Heinrich Klaasen, who has been in great form, will be counting on the Proteas taking two wicketkeepers to Australia.

It has also been good to see Keshav Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi affirm that they are still South Africa’s two best white-ball spinners.

Experimenting with players does not only confirm which ones are good enough for international level, it also shows the ones who are not yet ready for the step up, and this is more what Nienaber learnt from his selection gamble against Wales.

But you know your depth must be pretty good when players like Reeza Hendricks and Parnell, or Marcell Coetzee and Aphelele Fassi, are probably not going to make your World Cup squad.

Assistant coach Mzwandile Stick says the Springboks will be inspired by the past – both their’s and that of Wales – when the two nations of great rugby tradition meet in the first Test at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday evening.

For the Springboks, with their eyes on defending their World Cup crown next year, they are repeating some of the rebuilding process they did in 2018, a year before their incredible heroics in the global showpiece in Japan.

But they also know how Wales are feeling as their current situation is a bit like South Africa’s in 2018. Stick had already been with the Springboks as a backline coach under Allister Coetzee, but when the team endured a 33% win-rate in 2016, he was made a scapegoat and axed.

One of Rassie Erasmus’s first acts as director of rugby in 2018 was to reappoint the former Sevens star to the Springboks and put him in charge of attack and skills.

“We can compare this time to 2018, when Rassie and Jacques Nienaber came back and we started building for the 2019 World Cup,” Stick said at the Springboks’ Montecasino hotel on Friday.

“It’s similar now because we again have a lot of young faces and we want them to learn from the senior guys while we are still winning. It’s very important to build in the right space and that is a winning environment.

“But we’ve been No.7 in the world too, so we know how Wales are feeling at No.9. But we knew that if we could beat the All Blacks in 2018 then there would be a lot of forgiveness, even though we only had a 50% win record overall.

“It let us breathe a bit. We were desperate and we know very well that Wales will be too and they will come hard at us. They are stubborn and will not go away,” Stick said.

Since losing 20-11 to Wales in Cardiff in November 2018, the Springboks knocked the Red Dragons over 19-16 in their World Cup semi-final in October 2019 and then beat them 23-18 on their 2021 end-of-year tour.

Elton Jantjies slotted an 80^th-minute penalty that day to seal the victory and this time the Springboks are relying on the 31-year-old flyhalf to start the game rather than be the finisher.

“Elton is one of the key players in our system, he’s been with us for years,” Stick said. “Handre Pollard just joined us on Sunday, while Elton has trained with us for three weeks.

“There have been a couple of new things we have introduced in terms of how we want to play, especially in attack and our kicking game, and Elton has had more training of that on the field.

“There’s no first or second choice for us at flyhalf, they are both key for us at any given time. We know Elton is always ready and we can pick him without hesitation because he trains very hard and is very professional.

“In terms of match fitness, both of them have about 100 minutes of rugby under their belts. Elton also has leadership skills at No.10, he was one of the key leaders for the Lions when they played in three Super Rugby finals,” Stick pointed out.

One of the positive aspects of forcing South African franchises to compete in both the United Rugby Championship and the Currie Cup at the same time has been the way it has opened up an avenue to the professional game for those late developers who would previously have been stuck in club rugby and whose talent would ultimately have gone to waste.

It has also meant Griquas and the Pumas are now way more competitive in the Currie Cup, both being strong contenders for the semi-finals.

Surely no-one would disagree that the broader and more far-reaching the South African pipeline is, the better it will ultimately be for the Springboks. When one considers the roads players like Makazole Mapimpi and Marco van Staden took to the national team, one does wonder just how much great talent is still going to waste. Are they just the absolute flukes who made it through to the big time?

Drawing players from club rugby is something the Bulls have managed quite successfully, given how they go into the final weekend of Currie Cup round-robin play on the top of the log, while also competing in a URC semi-final in Dublin on Friday night.

But, as praiseworthy as their efforts have been, that should not detract from the fact that next season, when all four URC franchises have an extra European competition to contend with, the situation is going to become even harder to manage.

Both the Bulls director of rugby, Jake White, and Sharks head coach Sean Everitt have called for SA Rugby to release the franchises from their player caps. At present, South Africa’s top four teams can only contract 50 players and cannot spend more than R60 million on contracts.

While the intention – preventing unions from stockpiling talent as they did in the past and forcing them to draw from the amateur ranks – is noble, 50 players is simply not enough if you have three concurrent competitions to look after.

While a R60 million salary cap already puts South Africa at a disadvantage in Europe because it translates to just £3-million – compared to the £4.2m Scottish clubs can spend, £5m for Wales and England, £6.6m for Ireland and £10m for France – it is the numbers game that needs attention most urgently.

When a team travels, they usually take between 26 and 28 players with them – the match-day 23 plus cover in specialist positions like hooker, prop and scrumhalf. That leaves just about enough contracted players for a Currie Cup match on the same weekend. Unless, of course, as the Sharks experienced last weekend and the Bulls are dealing with on Saturday, you also have injuries, which are pretty much inevitable during a rugby season.

Then there are also call-ups from national teams like the Springboks and the SA U20s …

Now that SA Rugby have secured five lucrative seats at the European table, the last thing one wants is for the South African teams to be mediocre. The Currie Cup is also far too historic and valuable a brand to be allowed to become not much more than a club competition.

Just increasing the number of players a union can offer some sort of contract to will give the struggling coaches some breathing space. When the cap was originally introduced, South Africa was still in Super Rugby and the Currie Cup generally only really got going once that competition was over.

So there was no need for such massive squad numbers and the development of fringe players suffered as a result.

That is no longer the case and it is time to ease this particular burden on the unions.