Ken Borland

Richard Sterne was the 2008 Joburg Open champion and seemed on the brink of becoming one of South Africa’s great young golfers as he claimed three co-sanctioned titles that year.

But a debilitating back problem then struck and he could play just 10 events in 2010 and 2011, eventually opting for surgery. The 31-year-old eventually returned to full-time play on the European Tour in the second half of 2012 and showed he was back to his best last weekend when he finished second in the Dubai Desert Classic.

Sterne continued in that vein of form on Thursday in the first round of the Joburg Open as he shot an eight-under-par 63 on the par-71 West Course to claim a share of the lead with German Maximilian Kieffer.

“On the West Course you’ve got to put a good score together and I did that today. Some days it feels good and everything just kind of happens. Golf is strange – you’ve got to hit the right kind of shots at the right time. I’ve been minimising the mistakes and I hit 17 greens [in regulation] today, so I was never really in any trouble at all,” Sterne said.

Durban’s Bryce Easton nearly joined the leaders despite playing the tougher East Course as he fired a brilliant seven-under-par 65 on the par-72 layout.

Eight golfers were tied for fourth on six-under-par, with South Africans Jake Redman, Trevor Fisher Jnr, Allan Versfeld and Tyrone Ferreira the happiest of that bunch as they played the East Course.

Charl Schwartzel, the 2010 and 2011 champion, will also feel that he has more birdies stored up for later as he shot a solid 68 on the East Course, collecting five birdies, three on the front nine and two on the back, and just dropping a single shot, on the par-four ninth.

George Coetzee bogeyed the fourth and fifth holes on the West Course, but also picked up six birdies on the West Course and joined Schwartzel in the tie for 25^th.

Defending champion Branden Grace had an off-day with the putter and struggled to a par-72 on the East Course. He followed six straight pars with a bogey on the seventh and later double-bogeyed the lengthy par-four 11^th, offsetting the benefits of three birdies.

Later in the day, Norway’s Espen Kofstad and Englishman Ross McGowan made strong pushes for the lead, but both finished the first round on five-under-par, trailing Sterne and Kieffer by three.

Kofstad, the 2012 Challenge Tour order of merit winner, saw his round wrecked on the 18^th hole of the West Course, where he erred off the tee and then compounded the problem by putting poorly to end his round with a triple-bogey seven.

McGowan ran aground on the 16^th and 17^th holes of the East Course, bogeying both of them.

But Easton’s round, notwithstanding the precision golf played by Sterne, was the best of the day, highlighted by a hole-in-one on the 167-metre par-three 12^th hole.

“I missed a few fairways so I still need to figure out the driver a bit, I have some work to do this afternoon. But it’s nice to have a round where you don’t hit the ball so well but you still score well.

“Golf’s a funny game, sometimes you hit the ball flush and you don’t score so well,” Easton said.

Re that ace: Easton hit a seven-iron and admitted the first hole-in-one of his career took some time to digest.

“It’s my first hole-in-one and you obviously don’t think about it when you’re playing the hole. But then the ball goes in and it takes you a couple of seconds to realise it’s disappeared. It was an awesome feeling,” he said.

Easton’s reward was a million bonus points from the Hilton Hotel, sponsored by Investec, which translates to about R100,000 worth of free accommodation.

American Peter Uihlein, lauded as the world’s number one amateur in 2010 but with just over €10,000 in prize money as a professional, is also right in the thick of things on six-under.

“I am happy. It’s always good to play the first round well and get off to a good start on the West Course in particular, because I’ve been told the low scores come out on that course,” Uihlein said. “I understand that you have to be very patient in this game and not try to force it or get discouraged if you don’t make it right away. I’m 23, I’m still pretty young and I’m enjoying it so far.”

Fisher tore through the first six holes of the East Course in four-under, despite battling nerves, but then dropped shots at the par-four seventh and the malicious par-four 10^th to sandwich a birdie at eight.

Although Fisher won the Sunshine Tour’s Players’ Player of the Year award this week, he said he still felt like the knives were out for him due to the pressure of expectation now on him.

One man who is probably playing with little expectation is Kieffer, who finished 14^th in last year’s second tier Challenge Tour and is a rookie on the European Tour.

“The West Course is a bit easier from the tee and there are a couple more birdie opportunities. My secret today was my putting and I was very good on the front nine and just missed one putt on 18.

“But it’s a new world for me, I am still trying to prove myself and I don’t really know what to expect,” Kieffer said.

That probably applies to the tournament as a whole, with a clearer picture of the contenders expected to emerge on Friday when the golfers swop courses and the cut is made.

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South Africa’s Richard Sterne and Germany’s Maximilian Kieffer signed for eight-under-par 63s on the West Course to lead the Joburg Open after the first round of the Sunshine Tour/European Tour co-sanctioned event at the Royal Johannesburg and Kensington Golf Club on Thursday.

Sterne, the 2008 champion, continued to prove that he is over the back problems that plagued him for two years as he produced a flawless round with six birdies and an eagle.

Kieffer, the 22-year-old who hails from former world number one Martin Kaymer’s home city of Dusseldorf, is a rookie on the European Tour after finishing 14th in the 2012 Challenge Tour, but he putted superbly to collect five birdies on the front nine and three coming in.

There were five golfers within the top 11 who opened the tournament on the tougher East Course, with Durbanite Bryce Easton leading the way with a seven-under-par 65 on the par-72 layout, while compatriots Jake Redman, Trevor Fisher Junior, Allan Versfeld and Tyrone Ferreira were on six-under.

American Peter Uihlein, the world’s number one amateur in 2010, Sweden’s Joakim Lagergren and South Africans Tyrone Mordt and MJ Daffue were the other golfers on six-under, having all played the par-71 West Course.

Espen Kofstad, the 2012 Challenge Tour order of merit winner, was tied for the lead on eight-under-par as he reached the 18th hole on the West Course, but found trouble off the tee and on the green to post a triple-bogey seven and slide back into a tie for 12th on five-under.

Sterne’s eagle came on the par-five 507-metre ninth hole when he chipped in from just short of the green and the Pretoria product said the key to his round was minimising mistakes.

“Some days it feels good and everything just kind of happens. Golf is strange – you’ve got to hit the right kind of shots at the right time.

I’ve been minimising the mistakes and I hit 17 greens [in regulation] today, so I was never really in trouble at all,” Sterne said.

Fisher, voted the Sunshine Tour’s Players’ Player of the Year earlier this week, had the most topsy-turvy round of the frontrunners, with eight birdies and two bogeys and he admitted afterwards that he was struggling with nerves and the sense of expectation that came with the award.

For Easton, the highlight of his superb round was a hole-in-one on the par-three 12th hole, the first of his career, and worth about R100 000 of free accommodation from the Hilton Hotel for the 25-year-old.

Easton, who won twice on the Sunshine Tour last year, said he was looking for more consistency in the co-sanctioned events.

“I want to play more consistently and compete more in these bigger events. Last year I had a couple of wins, but I didn’t play so well in these co-sanctioned tournaments,” Easton said.

Two-time champion Charl Schwartzel was purring along nicely on the East Course as he posted a four-under-par 68, leaving him tied for 25th alongside George Coetzee, who played the West Course.

But defending champion Branden Grace, playing in the same three-ball as Schwartzel, could only manage a level-par 72.

New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming pulled some wicked stunts on a 25-year-old Graeme Smith when they clashed in a Test series, but then became something of a mentor for the Proteas skipper and the cerebral Kiwi is once again helping the growth of another potential South African star of the same age in Chris Morris.

Spinner Aaron Phangiso may have won the man of the match award for his brilliant two for 17 in four overs when the Highveld Lions beat Fleming’s Chennai Super Kings in the Champions League at Newlands last October, but it was Morris who turned the coach’s head.

Morris took one for 24 in four overs, halting a blazing start to the game by CSK, and also helped seal victory for the Lions with an important 12 not off seven balls at the death, including a massive six.

“I bowled well against Stephen’s team in Cape Town and I also hit a six when I was batting. I then happened to bump into him in a restaurant and spoke to him. He pulled me aside and said he was very impressed with my bowling and said I should keep in touch. It’s funny how things go in cricket … ” Morris told Sapa at the Wanderers on Tuesday.

Three-and-a-half months later, the Super Kings paid a head-spinning $625 000 [R5.5 million] to sign the all-rounder for this year’s Indian Premier League and a dazed Morris can still hardly believe how things have turned out.

“I’m still a bit speechless after going for a price like that and it’s mind-blowing because I modelled my captaincy at school on Stephen Fleming, he was my hero, the ultimate captain with a great cricket brain. And I’ll also be playing alongside people like Mike Hussey, a schoolboy hero of mine too, and Ben Hilfenhaus, who I really enjoy watching bowl,” Morris said.

India is probably not top of the list of places pacemen want to bowl in and the Super Kings are based in Chennai, a particularly spin-friendly venue, so Morris knows the IPL will be hard work.

“I hope I catch a game but it’s going to be a very different environment and pitches, plus there’s the heat. Conditions will be tough but it’s going to be a massive learning experience and a big test of my skills.”

But for now, Morris has to focus on the final cycle of four-day domestic series fixtures, with the Lions needing to beat the Warriors in Port Elizabeth to overcome a 9.66-point deficit behind the Cape Cobras in order to win the title.

Morris has been in top-class form with the ball, taking a superb 26 wickets in five matches at an average of just 16.73 and Lions captain Stephen Cook praised his bowlers for doing “a terrific job”.

“Someone has always stepped up, most of them have 20-odd wickets at a low average. When we played the Warriors in PE in a one-day game, the pitch seamed around a bit, but we have Imran Tahir too if the wicket is low and slow,” Cook said.

The weather has bought some breathing space for the Cobras at the top of the log as the Lions have had two matches washed out in the last three weeks, but coach Geoff Toyana, who has enjoyed considerable success since taking over from Dave Nosworthy at the start of the summer, remains positive his team can still win the trophy.

“The boys are in good spirits, although they are disappointed about the last three weeks, and if we play well enough we might be champions. I trust in the guys that they can do their skills and if we play to our full potential then we can come through,” Toyana said.

The Lions will be at full strength with current internationals Alviro Petersen and Quinton de Kock returning to the line-up and considerably boosting the batting.

Bisho schoolteacher Chris Nenzani became South African cricket’s premier administrator at the weekend, promising a new era for the game as he was elected president and chairman of Cricket South Africa’s board of directors.

Nenzani was the winner of a two-horse race with Western Province’s Beresford Williams and was an optimistic man as he faced a media contingent not yet convinced that Cricket South Africa has really changed its ways.

“We have come from a very difficult period and if you had asked me a year ago if there was a crisis, I would have said ‘Yes’.”

“But we have now gone beyond those trying times and we are looking forward to a very promising future. We will be checking our governance structure to ensure we regain public confidence and we must remember that the role of the administration is to remain in the background while the players are at the forefront,” Nenzani, the president of the Border Cricket Board, said after his election at the Wanderers.

While Nenzani was a popular choice and is a likeable man who distanced himself from fired chief executive Gerald Majola early on in the bonus scandal, CSA’s annual general meeting was notable for the number of administrators who have somehow survived their disgraceful actions – and lack of action – while the game was being looted and embarrassed in this country.

Andy O’Connor, the Easterns president, was at the forefront of the pro-Majola lobby and quite vicious in his criticism of the media over the last couple of years, and yet his name is in the list of seven non-independent directors who will run cricket for the next year alongside five independent appointees.

Northerns president Vincent Sinovich, Free State’s Leon Crawley and North-West’s Archie Pretorius were in the minority in terms of CSA board members who insisted that Majola should face independent investigation and their reward has been to be cast into the relative wilderness.

Norman Arendse, the former president of CSA who then tried to do the jobs of the chief executive and convenor of selectors, is one of the independent directors, in accordance with the recommendation of the nominations’ committee, which just happened to be dominated by people from his home city, Cape Town.

The other independent directors are Wesizwe Platinum’s Dawn Mokhobo, Constitutional Court trustee Vusi Pikoli, Absa’s Louis von Zeuner and Old Mutual chief operating officer Mohamed Iqbal Khan, while the other CSA nominations are Nenzani, vice-president Peter Cyster of Boland, Graeme Sauls (EP), Faeez Jaffar (KZN) and Rihan Richards (GW).

The decision to give the non-independent directors the majority of board places flies in the face of the Nicholson recommendations, but CSA was given the easy way out through the interference of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee [Sascoc], which insisted that the game should be run by “sports people”.

Nenzani admitted that one of the first tasks of the new board would be to reassure the public that it is not lapsing into the bad old ways that forced Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula to institute the Nicholson Inquiry in the first place.

“I wouldn’t say we have backtracked. My understanding is that our restructuring is not just about the composition of the board. As members of Sascoc, we are committed to continuing our engagement with them. We have to get the right balance between independent directors and those with cricketing knowledge,” Nenzani said.

Outgoing acting president Willie Basson described the situation as being “stranded” between Sascoc and the wishes of Mbalula and Judge Nicholson.

“CSA has engaged with the Nicholson process in good faith but in the end found itself stranded between powerful forces and seriously conflicting objectives. Being left stranded between the high aspirations of the Memorandum of Agreement with the minister and Sascoc’s requirements was both uncomfortable and disappointing,” Basson said.

Unfortunately Nenzani sounded like the National Party politicians of old who claimed they willingly ushered the country into democracy when he defended the continued presence of Majola sympathisers on the board by saying: “These are the same people who have taken this process to where we are now, they took it upon themselves to undo what made the public uncomfortable.”

Ah, Mr Nenzani, the CSA board had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the Nicholson Inquiry and it was only thanks to the perseverance of the sports minister and Basson, who the board tried to get rid of, that there has been any reform at all.

The fact that the AGM took place half-an-hour after the start of play on the second day of the Test shows that many of the administrators seemingly have little interest in the actual game. The gravy bowl is perhaps their prime focus and it seems the same old snouts are in it.

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