Ken Borland

After a bitter, confrontational year, there are many in international golf who just wish the whole LIV Golf affair and the resulting civil war would be resolved and the game could go back to the way it was.

Even Rory McIlroy, probably the most vocal supporter of the establishment tours, this week admitted that the whole feud has “gotten way out of control” and some sort of truce and lasting peace needs to be found.

LIV Golf holds their season finale this weekend with their Team Championship at Donald Trump’s National Doral. The purse is believed to be a staggering $50 million and it will surprise no-one that Trump has come out and praised the Saudi Arabian backers of the event and their big-money disruption of the status quo.

Back here in South Africa, as we prepare to go into the high-season of summer golf and the big co-sanctioned events, there is some good news. Golfers such as Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel and Branden Grace, who have always been favourites of local fans, will be on the fairways competing for some of the big prizes in the major tournaments despite having joined the LIV circus.

Schwartzel and Grace will be joining the likes of Dylan Frittelli, Oliver Bekker, Dean Burmester, Thriston Lawrence, Danie van Tonder, Erik van Rooyen and even the little-known MJ Daffue, the Pretoria product who has earned his PGA Tour card and led this year’s U.S. Open at the halfway stage, at the South African Open from December 1-4.

Christiaan Bezuidenhout is also hopefully going to play one or two events.

Oosthuizen is going to play in the Alfred Dunhill Championship at Leopard Creek from December 8-11, but will miss the SA Open because he is going to be in the U.S. for his children’s first week of the new school year.

At the moment, none of the LIV defectors will be going to Sun City to play in the Nedbank Golf Challenge though, because that is a DP World Tour event, part of their season-ending series, the invitations based on their order of merit rankings. The DP World Tour’s attempt to prevent LIV golfers from playing in any of their events was blocked by a UK court though, with a final ruling expected in February.

Although events like the SA Open and Alfred Dunhill Championship are co-sanctioned with the DP World Tour, they are played under the auspices of the Sunshine Tour and they are not going to turn away such drawcards as Oosthuizen, Grace and Schwartzel.

The Sunshine Tour is also going all out to ensure those who have never been drawn to golf as a spectator sport have plenty of reasons to come to these tournaments, especially the SA Open, which is being played at Blair Atholl Estate for the first time.

Sunshine Tour commissioner Thomas Abt explains that “We want to create an exciting and fun event, not just for the hardcore golf fans but for their partners and children too”.

“We will be showcasing the best of South African golf, but what else is there that attracts people? We have a strong vision of fan involvement, so there will be exciting fan parks.

“We want to create a real sense of occasion, we have some interesting options there, plus on every day, we will have three spectators putting for cash – R10 000 on the first three days and R100 000 on the final day. And it’s all at a spectacular destination,” Abt says.

Hopefully the golf family will be reunited in South Africa this festive season. At the end of the day, surely the game, its rich traditions and history, are worth more than a few making many millions of dollars?

After all, professional golfers always tell you it’s not the size of the paycheque but the prestige of the title that really matters. Or has LIV Golf brought us to the end of such idyllic notions?

The scoreboard shows a 44-22 triumph for the Bulls over Benetton in Treviso, but they had to work extremely hard for the win, with coach Jake White saying how proud he was of the way they stuck together like a family to end their two-match losing streak overseas.

The Bulls were fortunate to only be 9-3 down at halftime, and even though they were much-improved after the break, Benetton were still leading 22-20 on the hour mark. It was a titanic tussle, but the Bulls finished superbly with three tries in the last 10 minutes to not only snatch a hard-fought win, but also claim an unlikely bonus point.

“It’s a massive relief and I’m really proud of the players for the way they stuck together and got the reward for the work they put in at training,” White said. “And it’s wonderful that it’s a bonus point win, I’m really happy.

“The second half was fantastic, after the first half when we did not finish our chances and gave them a couple of soft penalties through silly mistakes. I had a feeling that we would finish well because Benetton looked dead on their feet.

“The talk at halftime was that we’ve got them on the ropes, every time we got down their end, we could feel the ascendancy. We just had to keep going and bashing at the wall, and it did eventually break.

“From a game that could have gone either way, we won with forty points. Not many teams come here and win, so a bonus point win is really good,” White said.

The most outstanding area of the Bulls game was at the breakdown and, were it not for numerous steals in the first half, Benetton would surely have been much further ahead and the mountain to climb away from home would have been too much for the visitors.

“Having Bismarck du Plessis, Marco van Staden and Marcell Coetzee together really helps at the breakdown, they are masters of understanding when to go in and what to do,” White said.

“I was very pleased with the defensive breakdown and we were also able to get quick ball, unlike the last two weeks. When we get go-forward ball, we play so much better.

“It’s a credit to the captain [the man of the match Coetzee] and the belief in the team. Sometimes these sort of wins can be a catalyst to jumpstart the season, turn it around.

“Coming off two losses in a row, 9-3 down away from home, how much more character can the team show? And it gets rid of what happened here last year in the Rainbow Cup final,” a delighted White said.

It’s not as if the Delhi pitch looked like the surface of the moon and provided extravagant turn or was a green mamba that seamed around, but South Africa’s batsmen still found a way to be bundled out for a miserable 99 in the third ODI against India on Tuesday.

Much credit must go to a superb Indian attack that barely erred in terms of line and length, and thoroughly exploited the reasonable assistance on offer from a pitch that provides a good contest between bat and ball.

Wrist-spinner Kuldeep Yadav, as he often has been against the Proteas, was the most effective of the Indian bowlers as he raked in 4/18 in just 4.1 overs. But the left-armer only joined the attack in the 20^th over, when South Africa were already deep in the mire on 71/6.

Having been sent in to bat, off-spinner Washington Sundar (4-0-15-2) made the initial strike, bowling wonderfully well around the wicket to the left-hander Quinton de Kock and removing him in the third over for just six.

A double strike by paceman Mohammed Siraj (5-0-17-2), removing Janneman Malan (15) and Reeza Hendricks (3), reduced South Africa to 26/3 in the powerplay.

The introduction of more spin brought even more pain for the Proteas as orthodox left-armer Shahbaz Ahmed claimed two wickets and deciphering Kuldeep was out-of-reach for the bowlers.

Heinrich Klaasen battled on for the Proteas, scoring 34 off 42 balls, before he was undone on the back foot – like many of his colleagues – and bowled by Shahbaz.

Marco Jansen was the last man out for 14 as South Africa were left on their lowest ever ODI score against India, and their second-worst first-innings effort in all ODIs, only their 83 all out against England in 2008 being lower.

The Proteas’ focus is clearly on the T20 World Cup and giving players game time, with Temba Bavuma and Tabraiz Shamsi again sitting out as they continue to recover from illness. Keshav Maharaj has now caught the bug and he sat out Tuesday’s game, David Miller captaining the ODI side for the first time. It is also the first time in ODI history that three different captains have been used in a three-match series.

Lungi Ngidi, Jansen and Andile Phehlukwayo were brought in for the decisive third ODI.

Former Springbok World Cup winning captain John Smit has advised fiery Stormers eighthman Evan Roos to find a way to keep his passion on the field, but stay close to the line without overstepping it when it comes to ill-discipline.

Roos, who made his Springbok debut against Wales this year, was yellow-carded last weekend for an off-the-ball tussle, that saw him lean his elbow on his opposite number’s neck, in the 52^nd minute of the Stormers’ win over Edinburgh.  It came at a bad time when the Stormers were under pressure, and it allowed the Scottish team to close the gap to 13-17.

Overseas critics have accused the 22-year-old of being unnecessarily confrontational, some calling his play dangerous and thuggish.

“Evan is a player who is really driven internally and he needs to find a way to control that emotion,” Smit said when asked at a Vodacom United Rugby Championship media call how he would handle a player like Roos if he were captain.

“Players get away with absolutely nothing these days, the most aggressive thing you’ll see on a field now is someone grabbing a collar and looking angry.

“Eben Etzebeth does it very well, controlling his passion right up to the end point of not getting in trouble. Evan needs to somehow know how to bottle that passion, and you don’t want to temper his enthusiasm.

“He just needs to be told though that losing control won’t just cost him but the team too. I would tell him that the angrier he gets, the more the team’s ability to succeed is diminished,” Smit said.

Smit of course had arguably rugby’s hardest ever enforcer to rely on to lay down the law in Bakkies Botha. But sometimes it took all of Smit’s considerable leadership wisdom to keep the legendary lock on the field.

“I had a few players in the Springbok team who sometimes suffered from over-stimulation!” Smit laughed. “Take Bakkies. Whenever I wanted to try gee up the team in the changeroom, I would wait for Bakkies to go to the toilet or get his knee strapped, otherwise my team talk would make him a bit over-zealous in the first five minutes! And that would be to our detriment.”