Ken Borland

George Coetzee is once again atop the leaderboard at Pretoria Country Club after shooting a five-under-par 67 in the first round of the Titleist Championship on Wednesday, but the seasoned pro of 13-and-a-half years’ standing was joined later in the day on the same score by rookie Hennie O’Kennedy.

The 34-year-old Coetzee has been winning tournaments at Pretoria Country Club since he was 10 years old and won two of his four European Tour titles here  – the Tshwane Opens of 2015 and 2018. And his bogey-free round on Wednesday put him one ahead of another rookie in Clayton Mansfield and two ahead of Sunshine Tour stalwarts Jaco Ahlers and Merrick Bremner.

But Coetzee warned that the fact he feels right at home on the parklands layout is no guarantee of ultimate success.

“It’s nice to be back here on a golf course I’m very comfortable on. I played with Ulrich van den Berg [74] today and he said to me, ‘You just know where to go here’, and after the round I thought, ‘Ja, I kind of do know where to go on this golf course’. If you play well and you’re in a good space, it helps.

“But there’s no such thing as a gimme in golf. If that was the case I would’ve won every tournament I’ve played at Pretoria Country Club, and I obviously haven’t. But it’s nice to finally get my first bogey-free round in tournament golf post-Lockdown, I haven’t expected much and I didn’t deliver much in the Series so far. It’s nice to finally post a decent number,” Coetzee said.

The Titleist Championship is the third 54-hole event of the Rise Up Series, a five-event schedule that represents the rising up of professional golf on many fronts, and O’Kennedy is one of several new faces marketing themselves as the potential future stars of South African golf.

O’Kennedy turned pro last year and enjoyed an excellent campaign on the Big Easy Tour, winning at Crown Mines and enjoying four other top-10 finishes. On Wednesday, as he celebrated his 24th birthday, O’Kennedy collected seven birdies and dropped just one shot on each of the nines in just his third Sunshine Tour event.

“It was a lovely birthday present and shooting in the 60s is always nice, it means there’s a bit less pressure in terms of making the cut. It was quite nice conditions today, not hot and not windy, although the cold weather meant we had to work on an extra three metres for every shot.

“I guess I am a big-hitter and that gave me a slight advantage in that I had short-irons coming in to the par-fives. But the layout of this course is so good, especially the par-fours, that you have to really think about your tee-shot. You can’t just take Driver everyhwere and you need to keep out of the bunkers.

“I think my round today showed that the Big Easy Tour is a great stepping-stone and preparation for the Sunshine Tour. The cut is often 30 players or less, which pepares you better because you’ve got to shoot low. Now I’m going to go home and rest and have some cake. I’ll stay away fom the beer until the tournament is done,” O’Kennedy, who hails from Stellenbosch Golf Club, said.

Many professional cricketers have suffered the indignity of not having their contracts renewed, but very few have rebounded and proven their former employees made a mistake as rapidly and emphatically as Eldred Hawken.

A year ago, the fast bowler who hails from Limpopo had been let go by the Titans and was contemplating playing club cricket in Johannesburg because at least he had family he could stay with in the city. But at the weekend Hawken was named both the Lions’ Player of the Year and the Players’ Player of the Year after his key role in the franchise defending their four-day title and being their best seamer in the Momentum One-Day Cup.

“It has definitely all caught me by surprise. When I lost my contract last year I felt hard done by and defeated. But my old man took me out to golf and said I should give professional cricket one more year, I had managed to build up some savings and he said he would cover me if I needed more. But I felt my future wasn’t moving forward in cricket,” the 31-year-old told The Citizen on Monday.

“I had tried to find a franchise contract somewhere with my agent, but it’s not easy. But Northerns coach Mark Charlton is a good mate and his opinion was that I should keep going, we did some one-on-one work and he said I should play some club cricket in Johannesburg and you never know where it will go. So I was living out of a suitcase, moving between relations, it was a crazy time,” Hawken said.

Having signed with Old Edwardians, Hawken had yet to play a game for them when North-West coach Monty Jacobs phoned him and asked if he was interested in playing first-class cricket for the Potchefstroom-based team. What followed on October 31 at Senwes Park was a pure sporting miracle as Hawken took nine for 14 against Easterns, who had won the toss and elected to bat. Not many have recorded better bowling figures, in fact they are the fourth best in South African first-class history.

“Monty was great to me, he said when I feel like training I must come through to Potch. I did pretty well but then North-West did not play in December and I was on three weeks holiday in Tzaneen when Lions coach Wandile Gwavu phoned to say they needed bowlers and I must come through for a few training sessions the next week.

“I guess taking those nine wickets in an innings said they must take notice of me, it got me into the mix. And then I took five wickets on debut against the Titans, I was man of the match, we won the game and the Lions just backed me from then on, I played every game,” Hawken said.

The wiry Merensky High School product is a bowler blessed with the ability to swing the ball late and, when he is on song, has wrecked many a batting line-up as a first-class record of 205 wickets in 53 matches at an average of just 21 attests.

“I guess I just get hot at a particular moment, all of a sudden I feel things just snap together and I can create things, you just want to jump on it and ride it when that happens. But I felt like I was also a more consistent bowler last season and I’m trying to focus on that. My economy rate proves I am becoming more consistent. Before I lacked confidence in white-ball cricket.

“For the Titans I never really got into a rhythm of playing week in week out, every game I played you felt under heaps of pressure to impress and you still might not play the next match. My goal is still to play Test cricket for South Africa and I know I can get there; if I lose my belief that I can do it then that’s when I should hang up my boots. In the short-term I just want to be part of another season in which the Lions do well,” Hawken said.

As the last year of Hawken’s life has shown, cricket is a queer old game and, if he can produce another great franchise season, who knows where his journey will end?

Cricket South Africa on Thursday officially parted ways with their chief executive Thabang Moroe, announcing that he has been fired with immediate effect for serious misconduct, but the size of his misdemeanours is only likely to be revealed in the coming months as the dismissed administrator’s legal team have already indicated they will fight his axing in court.

CSA’s brief statement on Thursday said the “decision was based on expert external legal opinion supported by the findings emanating from an independent forensic investigation” but they gave no details of what exactly Moroe had done wrong. And the CSA Board have already rebuffed requests for the forensic report to be made public, including from their own Members Council, which is scheduled to elect a new Board on September 5.

Many believe the report implicates the Board in many of the things Moroe has been punished for, a perception his legal team have supported.

At the time of his suspension, way back in December, Moroe had presided over a huge deterioration in CSA’s relationships with key stakeholders such as the players’ union, sponsors and media. He was also accused of excessive credit card spending and procurement irregularities.

The forensic investigators, Fundudzi Forensic Services, interviewed a range of stakeholders before submitting their report in May, since when CSA have supplied numerous different excuses for not finalising the matter more timeously.

Tellingly, Moroe did not avail himself of the opportunity to be interviewed by Fundudzi, a point CSA were quick to highlight in their statement on Thursday.

“Mr Thabang Moroe was offered sufficient opportunity to provide representations to the independent forensic auditors and to the Board regarding the allegations of misconduct, which opportunity he failed and/or refused to utilise,” the statement read.

Moroe’s legal team are likely to include this in any legal action they take, given that they also targeted the chairperson overseeing his disciplinary hearing, demanding that they be replaced by an independent figure.

As much as the CSA Board may now believe the Moroe matter is done and dusted, there are numerous parties who are determined to ensure the forensic report is made public, and the axed CEO will certainly be using it in his defence. The behaviour of the CSA Board will then be in the spotlight.

Dylan Mostert was well-served by his irons as he claimed a one-stroke lead after the first round of the Betway Championship at Killarney Country Club on Wednesday, but he was quick to acknowledge he was favoured by being able to play the majority of his round in the afternoon.

The morning field who marked the return of Sunshine Tour professional golf in South Africa, with the first tournament of the Rise Up Series, were greeted by brutal conditions – freezing temperatures and a four-club wind that combined to make the greens play like ice-rinks. Level-par was the best score anyone in the morning field managed.

Come the afternoon, the sun began shining more brightly and the wind died down. Not that Killarney was playing easy then either, and Mostert’s three-under-par 67 was the best score of the day, one better than the 68s shot by Dylan Naidoo, Ruan Korb and Albert Venter.

Michael Hollick, Wallie Coetsee, Makhetha Mazibuko and Anton Haig were on one-under, while seasoned Sunshine Tour pros such as Keith Horne, Jaco Ahlers, Adilson da Silva, Danie van Tonder and Ulrich van den Berg were among the golfers who finished on level-par.

“I hit a lot of greens because as soon as you are far away from the holes here you don’t have much chance. And I only hit three or four Drivers, I used my irons to plot my way around. I have game-plans for both winds and if it blows the opposite away tomorrow I can probably use more Drivers. But you have to be really careful where you leave the ball as you have to be on the right side of the greens.

“And it was a helluva lot easier in the afternoon. I heard it was very cold in the morning and the greens were probably a lot firmer. It was a bit windy all day, but no more than a two-club wind this afternoon, so nothing overly bad. But it must have been really hard to stop the ball on the greens this morning. It will be a lot colder tomorrow when I play so I’m going to have to grind it out,” Mostert said after his round.

Venter had a share of the lead until a bogey at the ninth hole, his last, when he missed the green on the left and was left with no shot for par. But considering that it was the 24-year-old’s first ever Sunshine Tour round it was a top-class effort.

He started on the 10^th and made par and then immediately dispelled any nerves with a tremendous run of four successive birdies.

“For my first event I’m really happy with my day’s work because I had quite a few nerves. But I had a brilliant start, a really good tee-shot down 10 and then on 11 I holed my shot from the greenside bunker so that was a real boost of confidence. I just hit the ball well, got it close to the hole and made good putts. It was just a matter of planning every shot.

“I had a few bad breaks on my back nine and it’s a tight course, hitting fairways and greens is the key. And the greens were fast so you need to be close to the hole and make your two-putts. You have to figure out when to attack on greens like these, you can’t go for everything. Plus I had the better side of the draw. So I’m starting on the front nine tomorrow and I know I must not be over-aggressive,” Venter said.