Innehållsförteckning för January 2022 från Compleat Golfer

When Dean Burmester sent his drive down the 1st fairway at Randpark Golf Club he was acutely aware he was making history. The South African had officially launched the new DP World Tour, which has consigned the European Tour to the archives. The European Tour had seen 43 South Africans win in the 49 years the Tour had been in existence. They date back to Gary Player’s victory at the 1972 PGA Championship – which was co-sanctioned by the European Tour. In fact, all Player’s four European Tour wins came at Majors. So. technically, Hugh Baiocchi’s win at the 1973 Swiss Open was the first on the Tour on European soil by a South African. The last European Tour win recorded for the country therefore was Garrick Higgo at the…

When many golfers hit their fifties and sixties they resign themselves to the fact their golfing ability and performance is on the decline. They have lost distance with every club in their bag. they are generating less clubhead speed and their swing feels stiff and restricted. These are all common areas of decline, observed in the ageing golfer’s game, but it’s never too late to improve with golf exercises. These characteristics are to be expected when we consider the typical effects of ageing on our bodies and in particular, our muscles. Muscle wastage is especially prevalent in those who lead a sedentary lifestyle. Inactive people can have as much as a 50% decrease in muscle mass between the ages of 30 and 60. We also lose on average 30% of…

While the past two years have been very tough for the golf and hospitality industries, the owners of Vulintaba Country Estate have grabbed the bull by the horns and are developing their nine-hole grassland links course into a stunning 18-hole destination. The upmarket estate belongs to the Ni-Da group of companies which started out in the trucking business with a single truck and is now one of the biggest operations in the country with more than 600 ‘heavies’, two hotels and a hunting lodge. Vulintaba lies in a stunning pair of valleys in the north-west corner of KwaZulu-Natal, less than 20km from Newcastle. The name translates as ‘open the mountains’ from isiZulu and is the nearest Berg resort to Gauteng. The Vulintaba logo is coincidentally similar in shape to the…

Vicki Traut wrapped up a third straight victory at the SA Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship when she won by three strokes over former champion Liezl Smit at Highland Gate Golf & Trout Estate. Traut entered the final day with a five-shot lead over Smit after rounds of 80 and 75. Vanessa Smith, the winner m 2014 and 2015, was a further four shots adrift, so Traut was an easy winner with a final round of four-over-par 76. ‘To be able to win the national championship is incredibly special, and to do it at this Ernie Els signature course is a dream come true,’ said the 40-year-old, who plays out of Erinvale and recently captained the Western Province women’s team to victory at the SA Women’s Inter-Provmcial Tournament. ’This course is so…

PICK OF THE MONTH 2021 winner: Englishman Tyrrell Hatton shot a sparkling six-under-par 66 in the final round on the Sunday to win the season-opening Abu Dhabi Championship by four strokes after overnight leader Rory McIlroy faded with an uninspired even-par 72 to drop into third. Hatton finished on 18 under par and secured a sixth European Tour title, a victory that went a long way towards ensuring a second Ryder Cup appearance. Australia’s Jason Scrivener recorded an eagle and five birdies in a back-nine 29 to claim second place on 14 under par. with McIlroy a shot further back after a disappointing final round. McIlroy held a one-shot advantage at the start on the Sunday and doubled his lead thanks to birdies on the 2nd and 3rd, but three-putted…

In only his second tournament after a five-month injury break. Ernie Els returned to the winner’s enclosure at the Dunhill Championship. Els may have coughed and spluttered through the early rounds at the par-72 Leopard Creek course, but class and experience told in the final round. While all around him opponents were treading in quicksand. Els fired a solid four-under-par 68 on Sunday for a 14-under-par total of 274 It gave him a three-shot cushion over Louis Oosthuizen and the previous year’s winner. Charl Schwartzel. Overnight leader Ulrich van den Berg had a dire finish to his tournament, dropping eight shots in the final 10 holes after holding a three-shot lead through the 8th. ‘I think it was my experience that helped me pull this one off. but 1 really…

Hurry, hurry, step right up, country musician Willie Nelson’s golf course is for sale. $3-million is all it costs to own this little piece of history. That’s a mere R45-million, depending on how low the exchange rate has gone by the time you read this. Might be R50-million, might be R40-million. Still a bargain, though. Willie is 88 now and a little past swinging a club. Age. together with his familiar money woes, seem to be the principal reasons for the sale. In case you’re wondering, ‘Willie’s Cut ‘n’ Putt’ is a genuine nine-hole, par-36 golf course in the town of Spicewood, Texas, about 45km north-west of Austin. The story goes that Willie got angry when he couldn’t crack the nod for the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, mainly because he was…

Only one person on the panel correctly called a first-time men’s Major champion for 2021. You’ve got a chance at redemption. Who breaks through in 2022? Gary Lemke, editor, Compleat Golfer: As defending champion in this regard, I’ll tee off first, Xander Schauffele seems too obvious so I’ll go with Viktor Hovland, who has yet to have a top 10 at a Major. I saw both close up at the Tokyo Olympics and they’re incredible golfers who have what it takes for the big occasion. Ivano Ficalbi, chief executive, PGA of SA: As we enter the ninth year since a South African lifted a Major trophy. I have my hopes on the South African PGA Championship winner, Dean Burmester. Grant Hepburn, chief executive, Golf RSA: It’s such a lottery picking…

The final event on the PGA Tour schedule provided one last rules incident involving Rory Sabbatini. During the first round of the RSM Classic at the Plantation Course he realised he had left a small sticker on the face of his fairway wood from when he was practising with the club earlier m the week. These small stickers are used by launch monitors to track face angle at impact and to collect data on swing speed and other parameters. Unfortunately for Sabbatini, this rendered the club non-conforming under the equipment rules and he was therefore disqualified after his round. Common practice among club golfers is to put some protective tape at the top or bottom of the face of their woods to protect them from wear and tear. Unfortunately, should…

Hole No 9, par five, 568m While there are a lot of great holes on the current Vulintaba course competing to be the signature hole, the best would appear to be the 9th. A big par five to close out either nine, it’s going to find itself challenged for that honour by a few others once the construction of the other nine holes is completed. As the 9th hole, its 550m length just to the front of the green will challenge the best of the big hitters. A back pin position could add another 35m to the hole’s length Then take into consideration that the strong prevailing wind plays from right to left across the fairway and you begin to see what a big task it is just to make…

Overheard in the halfway house, where there was a grab-and-go for those golfers involved in the season-sending Windhoek 5 Star National Pairs Series grand final: ‘Are you having a nice time?’ The reply: ‘Well, it’s a Friday afternoon and I’m in Cape Town playing golf, so how can I not be?’ That was a common thread among those who descended on Pearl Valley Golf Estate after the last semi-final at Steenberg Golf Club to bring the curtain down on 2021’s successful sequence of tournaments staged by Campleat Golfer. Although the south-easter was pumping in Cape Town some 65km away, the magnificent mountains around Paarl seemed to offer some protection for those who had come from far and wide. And unless they were from Gqeberha, they probably haven’t been exposed to…

The next ‘wave’ of young Sunshine Tour players is already crashing ashore on the DP World Tour with Thriston Lawrence’s breakthrough win at the Joburg Open. So, in the spirit of last month’s column about getting together and financially backing these youngsters on the rise, let’s unpack a few things. If there is one undeniable truth, it’s that there are two types of pressure in golf. The first being the ‘unhealthy pressure’ of needing to hole a putt on a Friday afternoon to make the cut, as a player with limited (or zero) money m the bank. This pressure is like nothing else in the game, as a poor stroke, negative thought or wrong line can mean the end of you as a Tour professional. The bottom line is that…

The year started off with a bang when I finished second at the Omega Dubai Desert Classic. It was the perfect way to start the year. It also provided me with an opportunity to play at a WGC event in Florida. But there was a problem – my US visa had expired. With Covid taking hold globally all the embassies were closed. After two weeks of begging, I finally got a visa appointment for the Thursday a week before the event. I received my visa only on the Tuesday of tournament week, so I had to get halfway across the world in little over a day. After travelling for 33 hours I arrived at my hotel around 11pm on the Wednesday. I did a Covid test at 7am and somehow…

Dylan Naidoo went overseas looking for an answer. He returned with playing privileges on two Tours in addition to the Sunshine Tour. He found his answer. ‘I went to a couple of Qualifying Schools to give myself the opportunity to test myself somewhere other than on the Sunshine Tour. I wanted to answer the question: Have I improved? Have I got to the point where I can find membership on a different Tour?’ he says. The young Sunshine Tour star returned with status on the Mackenzie Tour and Korn Ferry Tour. ‘That was the first step in realising my game is good and, while there is still some improvement I’m working on, it is able to translate on to a world stage,’ he says. ‘It’s such a tough learning experience…

Driving around the magnificent Pearl Valley Golf Estate in a golf cart in late November, meandering through the big competition field as they went about their business, brought home how hard we are on ourselves when we play. The occasion, the Windhoek Lager/ Compleat Golfer National Pairs final, brought together some very, very good golfers, including a smattering of top amateurs and club PGA pros – as well as those who were along for the ride As the saying goes. A bad day on the golf course beats a good day at the office’ But. encountering the number of golfers who apologised for hitting bad shots was a fairly different experience for me. given that we mostly are preoccupied with our own fourball. In a way. we are all in…

The end to the LPGA Tour season was a little different this year. We are used to a stretch of six weeks of competition, with four of those weeks being played in Asia, but due to Covid and a mandatory quarantine m most of these countries we were only able to play in Korea. The BMW Championship is normally one of the best weeks on the Tour, with great crowds as the Korean public are huge golf fans. We play m the city of Busan, which is on the coast, and stay in an amazing hotel on the beach but, once again, due to Covid restrictions we weren’t allowed out of the hotel unless it was to go to the golf course. The trip started with a 14-hour flight from…

From Truro, Cornwall, to a home in Potchefstroom; Rhys Enoch’s journey has produced memorable stops in a career that is gathering momentum. Perhaps one stop of great impact was when Enoch stepped out of what can become the humdrum confines of a life in golf that can clothe a player in anonymity and the fear of permanent mediocrity. Having got into the US Open m 2019 through the international qualifying event at Walton Heath in England, and made his way to Pebble Beach, he opened with a disheartening seven-over-par 78 – a round that included three birdies, six bogeys and two double-bogeys. It could easily have been enough to see him go through the motions m the second round and chalk his performance down to experience. Instead, he went out…

FootGolf As the name suggests, this game is a hybrid of football and golf, with players using their feet and a soccer ball in lieu of clubs and golf balls. Like golf, players need to get the ball into a hole, in this case a larger one, over a significantly shorter distance. The game has become very popular and has even attracted some big-name former pro soccer players, including Argentinian legend Roberto Ayala. The Federation for International FootGolf has an annual World Tour across 34 countries. It also has the FootGolf World Cup. where France won the men’s team event in 2018. Disc golf Also known as ‘frisbee golf’, this version of the sport we love has players throwing a disc at a target, as they would hit a ball…