Ken Borland

CAPE ST FRANCIS, Eastern Cape – Dylan Naidoo is one golfer who certainly won’t be ill-prepared for the vagaries of the St Francis Links when the Vodacom Origins of Golf Sunshine Tour event gets underway there on Thursday, the 24-year-old winning the pro-am on Wednesday with partner Malcolm Subramony.

After a blustery, totally overcast first day which really tested the golfers, Wednesday was much calmer and the sun made a welcome appearance. So Naidoo feels he is well-prepared for whatever weather the professionals get over the next three days.

“Today was a lot more like the weather we’re expecting for the tournament proper, so playing well works in my favour a bit. We’re expecting the same wind direction and amount of wind,” Naidoo said.

“But the first round was really different and difficult. I didn’t play great, but thankfully my amateur Malcolm came through with a bunch of points.

“This course is a really good test of every part of your game. You have to be good off the tee, your game-management needs to be really on-point and my chipping and putting was really good.

“I’m looking forward to a good week and I’ve been playing well for a little while, since I got through the first stage of European Tour School Qualifying three weeks ago. In fact, in the last six months my game has been heading in a good direction and I’m quite happy with it,” Naidoo said.

The globetrotting golfer now has his very own piece of Vodacom Origins silverware to cherish and he says the series has been a great help for him and many others in his fledgling professional career.

“It’s been a great series for many years now. To have the Vodacom Origins of Golf Series through the winter is a real bonus because otherwise there are not a lot of tournaments for us to play in.

“And if you’re a young pro who hasn’t played a lot, then the series gives your game really good preparation for the tour. It’s an opportunity to learn how to be a better golfer. It’s always a great start to the year for us,” Naidoo said.

As a professional rugby player, whether the Springbok captain like Siya Kolisi or a 23-year-old still making their way in the game, you are going to have your character tested by the vagaries of the sport.

The shifting fortunes of the teams in the United Rugby Championship have illustrated this perfectly. The Bulls, who had the pressure of expectation on them having dominated the local scene for the last couple of seasons, had to come through the toughest of starts in Europe and are only now inching their way off the bottom of the log.

The Sharks, meanwhile, looked the form South African team last year, culminating in their impressive dismantling of the Bulls in Durban in December. But since then they have been held to a draw and then beaten by the Stormers, who have now overtaken them at the top of the local shield competition.

And now the Bulls and the Sharks will clash in Pretoria on Saturday, a key local derby which Bulls coach Jake White described as being like a final.

“You’re going to have your character tested at certain times but the Sharks are still a great team,” Ruan Nortje, the highly promising young Bulls lock, said on Monday at Loftus Versfeld.

“They have lots of experience, Springboks all over their team. I’m sure they will be playing good rugby on Saturday and it’s important for us to also be ready.

“I don’t think last weekend’s result will affect the Sharks in any way. I’m sure they will be ready to bounce back.

“We’ll take confidence from the points we’ve gained in the last two games against the Lions, but it was not a perfect performance by us last weekend, we struggled in many aspects. There are lots of areas we need to grow, basic errors cost us,” Nortje said.

The Lions, Stormers and Sharks have all put the Bulls under pressure at scrum time recently and Nortje acknowledged that getting the better of Ox Nche, Bongi Mbonambi and Thomas du Toit is going to be a major challenge and the Bulls need to improve drastically in that set-piece.

“We’ve been under a bit of pressure at scrum-time lately, we’ve had some injuries. But the work coaches Russell Winter and Werner Kruger are putting in will help a lot in the long-term.

“It’s been better the last couple of weeks, but we are not where we want to be yet. We’re up against an all-Springbok front row – what a challenge for us!

“We will just focus on our processes and it will be great to test ourselves against a quality side like the Sharks. Last time we struggled against them in the scrums, which gave them a lot of opportunities to get into our 22 and convert that into points.

“So a massive step-up is needed by us at the scrums, and also at the breakdown, where we struggled as well,” Nortje said.

Whenever a governing body hands a coach a long-term contract it is an expression of faith in that person’s ability to succeed, whatever the vagaries of sport or that old chestnut that there are only two types of coaches – those that have been fired and those that are still going to be fired. Remembering of course that the longer a contract, the bigger the payout should it be prematurely terminated.

So to say SA Rugby have faith in new Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus is an understatement, given that they have given him a six-year contract, the longest in any sport in the world, longer than Pep Guardiola or Jose Mourinho.

But their extraordinary decision has certainly had a positive effect judging by the bravery with which Erasmus and his team approached their first four assignments.

Given that he has such job security and knows his buddies in the SA Rugby boardroom want him to have the job, Erasmus was able to make some bold selection calls against Wales and England, and his courage certainly seemed to have rubbed off on the players, given the ambitious rugby they produced and the way they bounced back from big deficits to win the first two Tests against the English.

The fear of failure that characterised the Allister Coetzee years has seemingly gone and a young, inexperienced team showed signs of blossoming into something wonderful. Coetzee had good reason to believe the administrators were waiting for him to fail and it showed in his conservative selections and game plan.

Judging by his first month as coach, it seems the Springboks are in good hands with Erasmus.

The players certainly seem to have enjoyed his coaching and, most importantly, you had to give them 10/10 for character with the way one of the most inexperienced sides in Springbok history overcame a horror start at Ellis Park and another poor opening quarter in Bloemfontein.

Which is not to say everything is perfect in the Springbok camp ahead of the Rugby Championship starting in August. But given the number of players who are just starting out on their international careers, who knows whether what we saw against England is 50% or 80% of their potential.

Probably the area which requires the biggest improvement is the mental side of the game and their ability to adapt to conditions that don’t suit them. Although it was heartening to see the intensity and pace with which they played in the first two Tests, there are times – such as when Newlands is a sodden quagmire – when you have to play the percentages better.

Ellis Park and Bloemfontein – both on the highveld and with weather suiting a quick game – are obviously very much in the Springboks’ comfort zone. The indiscipline and basic errors of the Newlands display indicated a team that was just a bit freaked out by very different conditions.

Since the last World Cup, South Africa have won just three of their last 14 games away from home. The challenges of playing in Mendoza, Brisbane and Wellington lie ahead. Mendoza is the heartland of Argentinean rugby and they pump up the passion even more there, making it a hostile place for visiting teams. The Springboks have won just once in 12 attempts in Brisbane and they have not been able to beat the All Blacks in Wellington since 1998.

But given the honesty of the straightshooting Erasmus in dealing with the negative aspects of his first four games in charge, I’m sure he will not be shying away from the tough questions that need to be asked in order to sort out the Springboks’ issue with playing in foreign conditions.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-kzn/20180630/282574493816989