Of course it was very disappointing for me to have to withdraw from the Thailand Golf Championship, due to an ankle injury, but I followed the event with great interest, albeit from afar.
Congratulations to my friends on the Asian Tour for hosting what looked like a superb week at a wonderful venue, and to Lee Westwood for a hard-fought victory; they often taste the sweetest. It looked like a tough golf course, the kind of test where a great ball-striker like Lee will always fancy his chances. Marcus Fraser, Scott Hend, Anirban Lahiri and Jonathan Moore also deserve a mention for earning the four spots available at next year’s Open Championship. See you at St Andrews guys! This new Open Qualifying Series, which gives players a chance to qualify for The Open at leading Tour events around the world is a fine initiative. Some of South Africa’s young players will get the chance to earn their Open places at the Joburg Open, the next event to feature the Open Qualifying Series, at the end of February.
Anyway, with last week being a bit of quiet time at home for me, this report gives me the opportunity to celebrate and salute winning performances from some of South Africa’s finest men and women.
It was good to see Branden Grace in the winner’s circle again after a dominant wire-to-wire victory in the Alfred Dunhill Championship at Leopard Creek, a spectacular golf course owned by my great friend Johann Rupert and located on the banks of the Crocodile River. This course has fantastic views of the Kruger National Park and all its amazing wildlife and the view from the clubhouse, with the sun setting, is surely one of the best in world golf. Really, any day at Leopard Creek is a good day in my book and to be able to win there in front of your home crowd, as I also did in 2006, is something very special, an experience that’s hard to beat.
We’re so pleased for Branden. As you may know, he was a member of the Ernie Els & Fancourt Foundation (EEFF) in 2006 and the way he’s pushed on from there is a testament to his talent and his work ethic. You may recall that Branden won four events in his debut season on the European Tour in 2012 (including a playoff win against Retief and me in the Volvo Golf Champions – no hard feelings!). No other player has won four times in his debut season; it was an amazing achievement. But I’ve always said that Branden is the type of player who can win anywhere and he has the game to follow in the footsteps of another of our former members, Louis Oosthuizen, and win majors. You can imagine what an inspiration this is for our current EEFF members back in South Africa. They’ll be looking at them and thinking anything is possible and, as I always say, if you put in the hard work like Branden and Louis, then yes, anything is indeed possible.
So this seems like an appropriate time to welcome four new members of the EEFF – Zethu Myeki, Lwazi Gqira, Fezekile Kana and Evance Vukeya – who complete the 21-strong class of 2015. The mission and objectives of the EEFF remain the same as always, with an ongoing emphasis on providing golfing opportunities, education and life skills to kids mostly from families of limited resources. We wish our 18 boys and three girls the very best for the year ahead. Congratulations also to Bianca Theron and Jovan Rebula who took top honours at this year’s EEFF annual awards.
Continuing the winning theme, we have to give a shout out this week to South Africa’s Rolene Strauss, the newly crowned Miss World 2014, and to the Blitzbokke – South Africa’s national sevens rugby team – who beat New Zealand in the final of the World Rugby Sevens in Port Elizabeth. All very contrasting disciplines, I’m sure you’ll agree! But winners all the same and helping make us South Africans feel proud. It was good also to see a wider celebration of our nation’s sporting successes at the South African Sport Awards in Sandton a couple of weeks ago. Well done to all the winners there.
Finally, as I was saying in last week’s report, this is a proud week for The Els Club Dubai (pictured below) as it hosts its first tour event, the inaugural Dubai Golf Open starting on Thursday. The players are in for a really fantastic week and if the wind blows it’ll be a tough test. My view is that the shot-makers in particular will have a good time out there. It’s very much a ‘second shot’ golf course – you’ve got to shape a lot of shots to score well. Also, players will find a lot of areas on and around the greens where the ball can be swept away from the pin, rather like at Augusta National, and then you’ve got your work cut out to get it up and down. I like that. My iron play has been good throughout my career and I’ve been pretty good with my short game as well, hence the design to reward good iron play. It’ll certainly be fun to watch.
That’s it for now. Don’t forget you can now follow me on Twitter @TheBig_Easy from where we’ll be making an announcement on Wednesday and offering some great giveaways. Keep an eye out for that!
