Innehållsförteckning för March 2021 från Compleat Golfer

Covid has affected golf in different ways around the world. After the first hard lockdown nearly a year ago, the sport went crazy. Golfers queued up to tee off at golf courses around South Africa. Record numbers of rounds were reported by many clubs, with new people taking up the game; others who had quit golf were starting to return and because there were no sports at schools, courses were flooded with junior golfers. In the third quarter of 2020 the US recorded the second-highest golf equipment sales total in history. Companies were caught off guard and even now have supply issues. The 2021 PGA Merchandise Show had to change to a virtual event. which was successful, although it attracted about a quarter of the viewers who would normally attend…

MEN OPEN 1 (2) Martin Vorstar (Pinnacle Point GC)2 (1) Casey Jarvis (State Mines CC)3 (3) Kyle de Beer (Port Elizabeth GC)4 (10) Christiaan Maas (Pretoria CC)5 (9) Ryan van Velzen (Benoni CC)6 (4) Yurav Premlall (Glendower GC)7 (6) Christo Lamprecht (Pinnacle Point GC)8 (5) Jordan Duminy (Pinnacle Point GC)9 (8) Werner Deyzel (Woodhill CC)10 (7) Samuel Simpson (Royal Cape GC)11 (11) Christiaan Burke (Potchefstroom GC)12 (12) Kieron van Wyk (Ruimsig CC)13 (13) Francois van der Walt (Centurion CC)14 (IS) Jordan Burnard (Ebotse GC)15 (-) Dawid Oppeman [Pretoria CC)16 (14) Aneurin Gounden (Ebotse GC)17 (18) Oliver Goldhill (Magaliespark CC)18 (IB) Jonothan Broomhead (Durban CC)19 (20) Altin van der Merwe (Humewood GC)20 (17) Nikhil Gopal (Victoria CC) WOMEN OPEN 1 (1] Caitlyn Macnab (Serengeti Golf and Wildlife Estate)2 (3) Kaylah Williams…

PICK OF THE MONTH THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP TPC SAWGRASS 11-14 MARCH 2020 winner: Err, there wasn’t one. The Players Championship was cancelled with immediate effect after the first round. The following three events on the PGA Tour schedule were also called off. Fears over the coronavirus pandemic which threw worldwide sport into disarray forced the PGA Tour to cease all tournaments up to, and including, the Valero Texas Open – the final stop before The Masters. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan had announced during the first round at TPC Sawgrass that the flagship event would be played to a conclusion but that spectators would be banned for the remaining three rounds, a policy that was scheduled to continue through to Texas. But with a number of high-profile sports suspending all…

The month of February treated me to not just one, but two new experiences. The first of which was an all-access pass to the annual PGA Merchandise Show, which obviously had to be livestreamed from the companies’ personalised studios this year. From the latest innovations and trends in the golf industry to a live Zoom chat with ‘Morikawa and Nantz’ about the 2020 PGA Championship, it was a fascinating and highly engaging week! That brings me to the next experience, which honestly left me feeling a lot more confused than anything else, as it involved disliking’ Patrick Reed just a little bit less than before... The Reed experience could not have come in a stranger week either, as it took place on the Wednesday evening of his win at the…

The European Tour @EuropeanTour Congratulations @DJohnsonPGA. Winner of the #SaudiIntlGolf for the second time in three years! Dustin Johnson @DJohnsonPGA Great way to end a great event. Excited for this year. Ryan Fox @ryanfoxgolfer Great week @SaudiIntlGolf finishing t6th. A bit of what could have been on the weekend but nice to be in contention again. @royalgreens_ksa was spectacular as usual Long trip home for me but looking forward to spending time with my girls when I’m outta quarantine #foxtracker Victor Perez @v_perez2 Many positive experiences this week to draw from going forward. Thanks to @SaudilntlGolf and @EuropeanTour for putting on such an elite event. Congrats to @DJohnsonPGA on a great win. Justin Rose @JutinRose99 I like the trend line. 3 weeks of wind, challenging greens and good competition has…

11 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational – Firestone Country Club (2018) This month I’d like to put the spotlight on this tournament. It was my first World Golf Championships event. It’s a tournament I had grown up watching, mainly due to Tiger Woods absolutely dominating it, winning seven times. So, as you could imagine, when we arrived on site I was like a kid in a candy store. I had a smile from ear to ear and eyes as wide as humanly possible. I remember walking on to the driving range thinking it was a putting green. I had never seen such a pure tee box in my life. I honestly felt guilty to take a divot. The course was immaculate and there wasn’t a blade of grass out of place. The design…

When, not if, Bernhard Langer wins again on the PGA Tour Champions, he will be the oldest golfer to win a Senior event The German just needs to get beyond 2 March to eclipse Scott Hoch’s record of 63 years and five months when winning in 2019, to enter the record books. ‘My goal is to be the best I can be, and if I can do that, I I think I will win tournaments’– Bernhard Langer Langer, whose latest of 41 Senior wins came last March, continues to churn out a relentless pace and even went round 72 holes at Augusta in last November’s Masters in fewer shots than the likes of Bryson DeChambeau, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Christiaan Bezuidenhout. The German was three under for those 72…

Few courses in South Africa come close to matching Milnarton Links when it comes to its prime oceanfront location. Threaded between the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean on the one side and the more serene Rietvlei Lagoon on the other, the course offers numerous vantage points of what many consider to be the finest views of Cape Town: the postcard vista of the city bowl framed by the harbour and Table Mountain. Yet it takes more than a collection of attractive beachfront views to keep serious golfers coming back regularly enough for the dub to register more than 50 000 rounds a year. At the heart of Milnerton’s success is that it gets the basics right and seemingly harbours no delusions of grandeur. ‘Our focus has been on consistency…

Martin Vorster sealed his comeback from a wrist injury with a dominant victory at the South African Stroke Play Championship at Randpark Golf Club, beating fellow Golf RSA National Squad member Kieran van Wyk by four strokes. Although he entered the week as the highest-ranked player in the field, at 29th in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, the 19-year-old was not quite his usual confident self, having spent much of last year recovering from the wrist injury. After four competitive starts since his comeback in January, however, Vorster was once again in the winner’s circle. ‘I had low expectations going into this week,’ he said. ‘The SA Stroke Play is one of our three flagship events and it’s been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember.…

The Road Hole 17th at St Andrews Old Course Par four, 399m Arguably the most famous hole in golf, by virtue of it being part of the most famous course in golf, the 17th at St Andrews Old Course is also one of the toughest par fours. It’s long, has out of bounds lurking on the right, thick rough to the left and, of course, there is that nasty pot bunker to the left of the green that seems to gobble up golf balls. Golden Bell 12th at Augusta National Par three, 142m The famous 12th at Augusta National, the middle part of Amen Corner, is one of the most scenic holes in golf. Given how exclusive the course is, the hole has taken on almost mythical status and has…

When the glorious Florida sun fell on the first day the 2020 Players Championship, Rory McIlroy was feeling pretty chipper. True, his level-par 72 had left him seven strokes off pacesetter Hideki Matsuyama, but he had birdied the last three holes at TPC Sawgrass and he still had time, Furthermore, he had all the confidence necessary with top fives in his previous seven PGA Tour events McIlroy was the world No 1 and nothing was beyond him, even the statistic that told him no Players champion had ever retained the title. ‘Coming back after lockdown, I just wasn’t prepared for the emptiness of golf tournaments... I’ve always sort of known I need that energy’ But then, late that Thursday night, the PGA Tour cancelled the final three rounds of its…

This is the story of a time before every golfer had a TrackMan on the range. A time when you had to wear long socks on the golf course if you played in shorts. A time when there was still a Sunshine Tour event called the Bushveld Classic. A time when many of South Africa’s young men first had to pick up a rifle and join the army before they could pick up a driver and join the Sunshine Tour. This is the story of James Kingston. It’s the story of a boy who grew up in the agricultural community of Ottosdal in the North West among the mielie fields on his father’s farm. A boy who grew up playing the game on ‘greens’ made from a mixture of oil…

Patrick Reed is no stranger to rules controversies, and his latest incident at the Farmers Insurance Open on the PGA Tour attracted a lot of attention. One of the key principles introduced as part of the 2019 Modernisation of the Rules of Golf was one giving weight to the reasonable judgement of a player in relief situations. During the Farmers Insurance Open, this was highlighted on two occasions. Two similar situations occurred under Rule 16.3, Embedded Ball. Somewhat predictably, the incident involving Reed attracted a lot more controversy than that of Rory McIlroy, and while a lot of ink has flowed in the media, it’s useful to have another look at the wording of the Embedded Ball Rule before making up your own mind. At the core of this rule…

By the time you read this I’ll probably have already played at the Cambridge LPGA, before the LPGA Drive On Championship, both in Florida. Which is a good thing, as I live in the state, but I m in the south and those two events are more central, in Orlando and Ocala. I took four weeks off from the game at the end of last year and then spent three weeks shaking off all the rust in January in the buildup to the 2021 season. First of all I had to find a golf club to join, which is easier said than done. There are so many professional golfers in the south Florida area that they don’t allow you to practise anywhere for free and unfortunately the courses in this…

at is a year ago this month when life changed for everybody on the planet The news of the coronavirus broke and the world went into a tailspin. The world of sport very quickly became one of the many casualties of the global pandemic as leagues shut down, stadiums closed their doors, and professional sportspeople sat idle. From behind his desk as one of South Africa’s leading sports psychologists, Theo Bezuidenhout was on the frontline in terms of the mental health of many of the country’s top amateur and professional golfers. And what he witnessed was how a game that demands supreme mental toughness from its competitors made professional golfers among the best prepared to handle the hard lockdown and the bubble environments when they returned to competition. ‘Golfers deal…

When lockdown began in earnest last year the absence of live sport meant us journalists were forced to think outside the box. It was my boss who suggested to me that we should do a book review show for SuperSport, and nine months later Cover2Cover is now well established. Golf has been well represented on the show, with Dan Retief s The Sunshine Boys at the top of the tree, thanks to its superb essays on the greats of the local game Barry Cohen, the founder of the SA Golf Hall of Fame, contributed two of his self-published books to the show. Blazing the Trail and Let Me Play, both deeding with the history of black golf in the country and with the remarkable Papwa Sewgolum. On the back of…