Ken Borland

KEMPTON PARK, Ekurhuleni – Kiera Floyd and Casandra Alexander will go into the final round of the Absa Ladies Invitational sharing the lead after the pair of South Africans handled an exacting combination of a gusting wind and testing pin positions with aplomb at Serengeti Estates on Friday.

First-round leader Floyd shot a one-under-par 71 in the second round on Friday to go to six-under-par overall. The 19-year-old, playing on her home course, began her round on the back nine and started brilliantly with birdies on the par-five 11^th and par-three 12^th holes, where she chipped in. She added another birdie on the par-four second hole and led by four strokes at that stage.

But bogeys on the last two par-threes, the fifth and the ninth, dropped her back into a share of the lead as Alexander finished strong by birdieing the seventh and eighth holes.

Floyd, who double-bogeyed the fifth in the first round, once again found the bunker right in a spot without any sand and chipped over the green before getting up-and-down for a four. On her last hole, she three-putted from across the green.

The 24-year-old Alexander also started her second round on the 10^th and struggled to a one-over 37 at the turn. But she mounted a superb comeback on the front nine, picking up birdies on the first and second holes. She bogeyed the par-four sixth, but an excellent pair of birdies at seven and eight set her up for a final-round shootout with Floyd.

They are three shots ahead of another South African, the vastly-experienced Lee-Anne Pace, who collected three birdies in four holes around the turn and posted a one-under 71 on Friday.

Spain’s Harang Lee shot a 69 on Friday and leapt into fourth place on two-under-par and Namibia’s Bonita Bredenhann and South African Stacy Bregman are on one-under.

Floyd is chasing her maiden professional title and is hoping all the hard work she has put into her game and her mental approach pays off under the pressure of the final round and the expectation of home fans.

“I’ve put a lot of hard work into everything – my mental game, my range-work, my putting, my driving – and hopefully it pays off and I can hold all that together and come out on top,” Floyd said. The last time I was leading going into the final round was as an amateur and I’m looking forward to it, hopefully I can close it off.

“Conditions were a lot tougher today, the pins were tucked and the wind was up as well, and the greens were slower but very difficult to read. It helps that I know this course so well and which way the wind blows. It was swirling a lot today and we had crosswinds, downwinds and winds into you,” Floyd said.

“I had a slow start and struggled for birdies on the back nine, I had a lot of lip-outs and a couple of short-sides cost me drops,” Alexander said. “It was much harder today because there were some tricky pins and the wind and the pin-placements together made for quite a deadly combination.

“But it’s always a challenge I enjoy and something has definitely clicked this week after I got a new coach at the beginning of the year. When you do that, you go through changes and you have to be patient, even though you just want to score low straight away.

“But my game is getting better, it’s tighter and cleaner and my skew shots are not as skew. We’ll see what happens tomorrow,” Alexander, a four-time winner on the Sunshine Ladies Tour, said.

One can learn so many life lessons from sport and I am convinced that more can be learned from golf than most other codes. My own golf is certainly a lesson in dealing with frustration and how to extricate oneself from seemingly unreachable positions.

But professional golf, especially the Majors, provides such human drama and, as in life, disaster or glorious success seem just as likely to occur on the next hole.

Last weekend in the PGA Championship at Southern Hills, Mito Pereira was one hole away from one of the most astounding Major triumphs. He had seemingly beaten off numerous, way more experienced and storied challengers, on a chaotic final day to stand on the 18^th tee clinging to a one-stroke lead. All he needed was a par to become one of the rare rookies, playing just his second Major championship, to win on one of golf’s grandest stages.

The 27-year-old from Santiago, Chile, decided to go the aggressive route, and hit Driver. Except he made an awful swing and deposited his ball in the creek down the right, leading to a double-bogey. Not only was Pereira no longer at the top of the leaderboard, he wasn’t even in the playoff that would decide the fate of the Wanamaker Trophy, Justin Thomas eventually emerging as the champion.

When Pereira decided to take the risky route on the last, you could almost hear Sir Nick Faldo tearing his hair out in the commentary box. The man who famously made 18 pars to win the first of his six Major championships in the 1987 Open at Muirfield, could not fathom why the leader had not just played it safe.

It was a most frustrating end to what would have been a fairytale win. I have no doubt Pereira just went with Driver because it had worked before.

While sympathy for his cruel fate was the over-riding emotion, it does anger me when highly-talented sportspeople justify poor decision-making by saying things like “that’s just the way I play, that’s my game.”

Just as the rest of us have to adapt to the various challenges and frustrations of life, so sports stars have to adapt to their circumstances. Play the situation!

If you’re roaring to victory by four shots, or your team is 370/3 or 30-7 up, by all means be aggressive. But the truly great sports heroes are able to tailor their game to whatever the situation, or their team, requires in order to win.

For now, Pereira will be walking the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, but he certainly showed he has game and I will be surprised if he does not win on the PGA Tour, once he gets over this heartbreak. Most importantly, how he handled the devastating blow has been widely acclaimed and he fronted up to the media after his round when all he would have wanted was to go and hide away somewhere. Dealing with failure is another life lesson, of course.

Long-form sports, where the tension is gradually ramped up before it reaches a tremendous crescendo on the final day, are right up my street. Golf’s Majors, and especially the Ryder Cup, are still such compelling viewing even in an age where the cancer of instant gratification seems to reign supreme.

Golf can be just as slow as Test cricket, but the feeling of that tension building as you reach the final round is a bit like a Hitchcock horror movie – a masterful building of suspense.

Sport needs to have good stories, as well as the best players in the world in the limelight. How good was it to have an unknown like Pereira challenging for what would have been an incredible win in the PGA Championship?

Even though he was pipped in the end by one of the world’s best in Thomas, it was still wonderfully dramatic.

Test cricket can perhaps learn its own life lessons from golf. It can provide just as much drama, but it needs to be properly packaged, marketed and looked after by the ICC.

It will be all change for the Sharks in both halfback positions as they begin their United Rugby Championship campaign overseas, following the announcement on Friday of their touring squad that is without Lionel Cronje but includes two scrumhalves on loan from the Free State.

The 32-year-old Cronje was on a short-term loan to the Sharks from Toyota Verblitz in Japan for the duration of the Currie Cup and his arrival saw coach Sean Everitt shift Curwin Bosch from flyhalf to fullback.

But Cronje’s departure means Bosch is likely to return to the number 10 jersey in which Everitt backed him so strongly before the Currie Cup. Boeta Chamberlain is the only other specialist flyhalf in the squad.

Veteran Springbok Ruan Pienaar has returned to the Sharks on loan from the Cheetahs and has moved to flyhalf quite often during games for Free State, but with the Sharks suffering an injury crisis at scrumhalf, Pienaar is likely to be backing up Sanele Nohamba. Tian Meyer has also made the trip from Bloemfontein to Durban on loan.

Everitt will be pleased to have locks Hyron Andrews and Ruben van Heerden back from injury, which will add depth to a crucial position that already features Gerbrandt Grobler, Le Roux Roets and Reniel Hugo.

Eighthman Phepsi Buthelezi will lead a squad that will relish taking on some fresh opposition, having butted heads many times back home with the Bulls and taking a severe beating in the Currie Cup final last weekend.

“The boys are up for the challenge, we have some experienced players who have played in the Pro16 before and have had a taste of European conditions, and we have coaching staff who have coached at the highest level. We’re all confident that we can do well overseas, we’ve taken a young squad mixed with some older heads with experience.
“It will be exciting to see what these guys can deliver against opposition that we don’t see too often, nor play against. The boys are excited about experiencing a new competition, the URC is a tough tournament that brings in new challenges and different opposition, but the guys are up for the challenge after a very good Currie Cup and a good year,” Everitt said.

Squad: Anthony Volmink, Yaw Penxe, Thaakir Abrahams, Marnus Potgieter, Werner Kok, Marius Louw, Jeremy Ward, Murray Koster, Rynhardt Jonker, Curwin Bosch, Boeta Chamberlain, Sanele Nohamba, Ruan Pienaar, Tian Meyer, Phepsi Buthelezi, Henco Venter, Thembelani Bholi, Celimpilo Gumede, Dylan Richardson, James Venter, Gerbrandt Grobler, Hyron Andrews, Le Roux Roets, Reniel Hugo, Ruben van Heerden, Thomas du Toit, Khutha Mchunu, Lourens Adriaanse, Ntuthuko Mchunu, Wiehahn Herbst, Khwezi Mona, Kerron van Vurren, Fez Mbatha, Dan Jooste.

The independent directors on Cricket South Africa’s board have not always furthered the best interests of the game in this country, but hopefully this time it will be different as nominations for those positions close on Friday.

The Interim Board currently in place is trying its utmost to ensure that the governance scandals that have rocked Cricket South Africa in recent years never happen again and those efforts centre around the independent directors. The Memorandum of Incorporation they are developing for CSA has two non-negotiable aspects that will empower those independent directors, according to one of the Interim Board members.

Firstly, the new board that will come into place in mid-April will comprise a majority of independent directors and, secondly, the chairman of the board must be an independent director as well. There will now be a clear split between the board and the Members Council, which comprises the provincial presidents.

The Members Council will elect a president who may sit on the board, but they will not be the chairman.

While the Interim Board are looking for “people of integrity and substance who are also cricket people”, the quality of the new independent directors will only be as good as the nominations received. Which is why the current board are anxiously awaiting Friday and hoping their advert on CSA’s website [https://cricket.co.za/item/336/Careers] draws some standout applicants.

What is also crucial is the quality of the nominations committee that will sift through the candidates and this has apparently been another area in which the Interim Board are ensuring they get the right people.

While acting CEO Pholetsi Moseki is doing a good job, the new board will also have to find a permanent CEO who can drive CSA’s renaissance as well as having standing at International Cricket Council level. The independent directors will drive that process.