Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2021 i Compleat Golfer

Well, we got there – eventually! After an entire year of suspense the Olympic Games are happening in Tokyo. And what an incredible event it could turn out to be. I had the honour of representing South Africa in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 edition and I can honestly say it was the best sporting experience of my life. I have never been so close to so many iconic sporting personalities – ever. Within the first two days I had seen Usain Bolt, Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams. How can you top that kind of star-spotting? People often ask me what the best part was about the whole experience. The answer is quite simple really, it has to be the athletes’ Olympic village. It’s the…

Louis Oosthuizen could have had seven Majors to his name by now. And he’s only 38. Yet, the reality is that he still has ‘only’ the one Major to dine out on – the 2010 Open at St Andrews. He should be in the conversation about the best South African golfer, along with Gary Player and Ernie Els, who won nine and four Majors, respectively. Much is made of the fact that Els should have won more but for the fact he bumped into Tiger Woods in his prime. On one of the six occasions he finished runner-up, though, at the 2000 US Open, he was 15 shots behind Woods. The biggest deficit in finishing second Oosthuizen has suffered is two shots. The latest setback was by one shot, when…

What if the spat between Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau was just a bit of ‘theatre’? What if it was golf’s version of boxing’s Floyd Mayweather versus Logan Paul? Where something is hyped up to create interest, only to discover that there actually aren’t any hard feelings at all and behind the scenes there’s a couple of laughs and fist bumps? In Mayweather’s case, he stood to bank some$70-million for keeping a YouTuber with a 0-1 ‘professional record’ upright for eight rounds of boxing with Paul earning upwards of $20m That light’ was bought by over 600 000 pay-per-view watchers. It was another farce that gave boxing yet another black eye. but few care about the sport itself It’s all about clickbait’. social media popularity and bingo!’, we have a…

My book club meets on the first Tuesday of the month. Our proud slogan is, ‘We don’t read books, we write them,’ since we number at least four published authors among the regulars. Our WhatsApp group is more eclectic than most and was a source of much-needed entertainment during last years hard lockdown. We may be old but we try to move with the times and now the talk is all about vaccines. Have you been jabbed? Where did you go? What was it like? etc. At the June meeting, however the unstoppable creep of anno domini produced a conversation unlikely among millennium children Replacement parts That’s right, replacement parts Doc had his hip done three months ago and Pat attended our meeting on crutches having had both knees operated…

“LITTLE MAN, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS MEANS RIGHT NOW. BUT YOU WILL SOON ENOUGH.”JON RAHM PGA Tour @PGATOUR New father @JonRahmPGA shared a special moment with his son, Kepa, immediately after his win. Louis Oosthuizen @Louis57TM I’ll keep knocking on that Major door. Gave it my best and am thankful to the @USGA and @usopengolf for a great week. Enjoy the win, @JonRahmpga! Nothing like a Major win on Father’s Day as a new dad. #USOpen Branden Grace @BrandenGrace Hoppy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. I know what it means to be a father and it’s the best feeling in the world, our little boy puts a smile on our faces every day. When I lost my dad beginning of the year, he left me…

7 Dubai Desert Classic, Emirates Golf Club This has been a standout fixture on the European Tour for more than three decades. Many of golfs elite, including Tiger Woods (twice champion) and Ernie Els (three-time winner), have attempted to hoist the massive trophy after emerging victorious. We’ve all seen the photos of how Dubai has completely transformed over that time; from a bare wasteland to one of the most iconic skylines anywhere in the world. The course, much like the city, has also transformed. It’s become one of the more quirky designs we play, with the layout demanding us to be able to move the ball severely through the air. The greens are very flat and quite simple, but not to be mistaken for easy. The greens for the tournament are…

Hennie Otto laughs, which is amazing in itself, when you consider what he has been through. ‘It’s been a big rollercoaster,’ he says of his life, and most notably the last three years of it. If your only reference of Otto is of a golfer with a bad temper who famously chucked his golf clubs into the river at Wild Coast Sun Country Club – which, by the way, still trends on YouTube – perhaps your perception will change. ‘I’ve always put my kids first, so I needed to make sure they were settled. Otherwise I would’ve had to stop playing golf’ In the past three years, the man you see on TV muttering a swear word after missing a putt has fought a private battle with his wife’s depression,…

Many of you may have heard of REM; no, not the retro rock band, the term used when referring to the dream state during sleep. REM, which stands for ‘rapid eye movement’, is one of the four stages of your body’s natural sleep cycles, along with light, deep and wake. It is known as the ‘cognitive restoration’ phase of sleep when the brain converts short-term memories into long-term ones. Your brain is very active during REM sleep and it is when the most vivid dreams occur. There are a number of physiological changes that occur in the REM phase. Your eyes move rapidly back and forth behind closed eyelids, your face and limbs may twitch and your heart rate and blood pressure rise to levels nearly as high as when…

Umhlali is a course which has become better and better over the years, with accolades including national awards for club management and water conservation and for greening the maintenance process. It was set up as a nine-hole country course in 1961 on the outskirts of the sleepy KwaZulu-Natal North Coast village of Ballito, which comprised fewer than 500 residents. It was to become the first item on the course-building CV of the now legendary Peter Matkovich. who joined the club in 1973 as course superintendent. In keeping with modem times, the club has a well-run, user-friendly website which is updated with weekly golf results and from the other three sports (bowls, squash and tennis) that are key components of the venue. The par-71 course has three par fives and isn’t…

The Western Province trio of Kaylah Williams, Isabella van Rooyen and Bobbi Brown ended an 18-year winning drought in the WGSA 72-Hole Team Championship at Kingswood, while Demi Flanagan, Kesha Louw and Lisakhanya Payiya clinched the promotion battle for Border. The Western Province team was simply superior at the Swiss Team Trophy, producing three of the lowest scores over the four rounds of the strokeplay team tournament. Van Rooyen capped off a fine outing as she also claimed individual honours, by a shot over Brown. The team combined for rounds of 142, 146,137 and 136 for a winning total of 561, 17 shots clear of Gauteng A Williams, who will be going to Florida State University in August, could not have imagined a more perfect swansong in her final appearance…

Last Open Championship revisited (2019): The 2020 Open was cancelled due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. That means Shane Lowry is the defending champion, from 2019. The Irishman overcame the biggest nerves of his golfing life, handling the wind and the rain to win The Open by six strokes amid emotional scenes at Royal Portrush. Fervently cheered on every shot by the sellout crowd, the 32-year-old from Clara, who began the day with a four-stroke lead, was never seriously troubled in the final round with England’s Tommy Fleetwood unable to take his chance: to put him under pressure. Lowry carded one-over-par 72 in strong winds and at times driving rain, but he was rewarded with wild celebrations as the fans charged on to the fairway behind him as…

No matter at what level you play golf, there comes a moment when you lose yourself in the thrill of the battle. The chase becomes all-consuming and, in the end, your memories will be of a time when the golf was automatic. For Neil Schietekat, one of those times came during the final round of the 2011 Telkom PGA Championship at Country Club Johannesburg, when he was 27. He was in the final group with a 24-year-old George Coetzee and a 22-year-old Branden Grace, and Schietekat went toe-to-toe with the young guns, two players who were to go on to bigger things internationally. In the end, Coetzee prevailed over Schietekat by two shots, with Grace another two shots back in a share of third with Garth Mulroy. Coetzee finished on…

The Open is back! And so is links golf, which separates this championship from the others on the men’s Major rota. After the event became one of many sporting non-starters of 2020, it’s on the calendar again and all indications are that crowds will return to the Kent sunshine and watch developments in Sandwich with renewed exuberance. Royal St George’s has thrown up a few upsets in its 14 stagings of The Open. The last time it was held there, in 2011, Darren Clarke won his first Major at the age of 42. Like Phil Mickelson’s win at this year’s PGA Championship, it constituted an upset, although Phil was nearly 10 years older. The previous staging at Royal St George’s was in 2003 when the relatively unknown Ben Curtis sprang…

On a glorious Friday final round at Gary Player Country Club in June, Alex Haindl took a two-stroke lead and birdied three of his first four holes to increase it as he chased victory at the SunBet Challenge hosted by Sun City. But he didn’t get too excited. ‘I’ve played golf way too often to know that somewhere, something is going to happen,’ he said. His instincts of a 21-year professional career and thousands of tournament rounds were proved correct when he bogeyed the 8th and then hit it in the water on the 9th for a double-bogey that saw him fall one shot behind going into the back nine. But he hung on to win by one shot, claiming his fourth Sunshine Tour title. It was a win that…

The local rules for the 2021 PGA Championship included an interesting ruling by the tournament committee. The venue for the Major, the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, is built on sand dunes bordering the ocean and as a result there are numerous natural sandy areas throughout the course. Most of these areas are just the natural landscape, while others were constructed and are maintained as bunkers. However, the committee decided that in order to avoid any confusion as to what and what doesn’t constitute a bunker, they declared there were no bunkers at all on the course. All sandy areas were to be treated as part of the general area. So a ball lying in a sandy area would be treated the same as if you were in the rough…

Before I hit my tee shot on the signature 4th hole, I took a quick picture with my phone. It’s now saved as my background, and screensaver That should tell you a lot about the view from the tee. The 4th is not just a tough par three, it s a distraction too The panoramic view from the tee box can easily lull you into a false sense of security It looks like an easy shot to the large green which has as a backdrop an amphitheatre of trees framing your shot. But wait.... there’s a darn in front, and bunkers left and right to catch any shots hit slightly offline. And a big downslope over the back How will we tackle this 159m hole successfully? Let’s ask Umhlalis golf…

Five years ago the Zika virus was the talk in golf’s locker rooms. Rio de Janeiro, the host of the 2016 Olympic Games, was deemed too risky by many of the top golfers, with concerns around the virus being cited as an excuse for skipping golf’s re-entry to the Games 112 years after it was previously staged. Bubba Watson, then the world No 5, was the highest-ranked men’s golfer after those ahead of him withdrew over fears of contracting Zika. For South Africa, Louis Oosthuizen, Branden Grace and Chari Schwartzel all made themselves unavailable, as did Lee-Anne Pace on the women’s side. As selection fingers moved down the World Ranking list, Jaco van Zyl and Brandon Stone became the two leading South Africans willing to go to the Olympics. Justin…

JB Holmes – brain surgery In 2011, JB Holmes withdrew from The PGA Championship after experiencing what he described as vertigo symptoms during the first round. The diagnosis was far more serious – he had structural defects in his cerebellum known as Chiari malformations. Two brain surgeries later, in which doctors removed a piece of his skull and replaced it with a titanium plate, Holmes was not expected to return to the Tour. Instead, the American made his comeback in 2012 and, two years later, he won the 2014 Wells Fargo Championship. The 39-year-old has since won another two PGA Tour titles. Brandon Todd – driver yips Brendon Todd had reached No 40 in the World Ranking by 2014 and had a PGA Tour win and a couple of Web.com…