PGA National’s Champion Course certainly lived up to its reputation last week as one of the most challenging layouts that we play all year on the PGA TOUR.
The course was in great shape and they did a wonderful job getting the course in top shape after some pretty heavy rain showers on Tuesday and Wednesday. Scoring is always very tough here and it’s one of those courses where you can make a double-bogey or worse in the blink of an eye. Overall, I actually didn’t do too bad a job negotiating the most dangerous stretch of holes, the notorious ‘Bear Trap’. In fact, if you include 18 into the mix I played the last four in 2-under par for the week. And I was happy with how I responded on Friday afternoon to make the cut with three birdies in the last five holes. I holed some clutch putts there and it was really pleasing to feel so comfortable with the stroke in that situation.
Over the weekend I just didn’t have the consistency that I needed in other parts of the game and, as I have said, if you get slightly out of position here you can make bogeys quickly. We even saw that with the leaders. And congrats to my buddy Adam Scott on a superb win, his first on the PGA TOUR for a couple of years. We are all competitive athletes, but I don’t think you will find anyone who isn’t happy for him. Well done also to Louis Oosthuizen who won over in Perth, Australia at the weekend. That makes it six wins out of 11 for South African golfers on this year’s European Tour. A better than 50 per cent strike rate. It is great to see such high quality performances.
On a more sobering note, I know I speak for everyone on TOUR in sending my best wishes to Jason Bohn who suffered a major heart attack after his second round at the Honda. We’ve since heard from his agent that he’s in good spirits and resting comfortably, which is obviously encouraging news. We look forward to seeing Jason back out on TOUR hopefully before too long.
In other news, we chose last week’s Honda as the now traditional slot to announce the schedule for the 2016 Els for Autism Golf Challenge. This is our sixth year of playing this event and it has been a massive success, raising almost $12 million to date. Liezl and I can’t thank enough our Golf Challenge teams and sponsors who have helped us deliver on our dream of improving the lives of individuals on the autism spectrum. Special thanks go to our long-term Presenting Sponsor SAP as well as our Organising Sponsors, RBC, Adams Golf and Wine Spectator, our Contributing Sponsors, Regional Sponsors and our event chairmen, who all together form the heart of the Golf Challenge series. We couldn’t continue to do this without them.
The Golf Challenge maintains its status as the largest international charity-driven amateur golf tournament and, as in previous years, it consists of a series of Super Regional events at some great courses across the US and Canada from May through October. We’re blessed to have the support of a number of outstanding courses, among them major venues such as Baltusrol, Chambers Bay, Philadelphia Country Club and Hazeltine. There are also a bunch of PGA TOUR courses including Trump National Doral, venue for this week’s Cadillac Championship and where our event series launches on May 9th, and Royal Montreal, East Lake, TPC Boston, Harbour Town and the 2009 Solheim Cup venue Rich Harvest Farms.
There are lots of other top-rated courses on the schedule and the Els for Autism team works really hard to try to ensure that we have a good geographical spread right across North America, so hopefully there’s at least one location to accommodate everyone who wants to take part. Please click here for the full schedule, where you’ll also find information on how non-golfers can take part in our Gallery Club which gives you the chance to join me at our Grand Finale (pictured below) this coming November. Whether you play golf or not, we’d love to have you on board.
Now moving on, the PGA TOUR heads south down the east coast of Florida to Miami this week for the WGC – Cadillac Championship at Doral, a great tournament that I’m sorry to be missing out on. My goal is to be back inside the top-50 soon, though, so next season I intend to be teeing it up at Doral and in all of the year’s other WGC events.
While we’re on the subject of Miami, though, now seems like the ideal time to mention the launch of our first Big Easy Winebar & Grill in the United States, located in downtown Miami at the exciting new Brickell City Centre. This will be our fourth Big Easy Winebar & Grill after Stellenbosch (2008), The Els Club Dubai (2013) and Hilton Durban (2015), and takes the brand another step down the road in its goal to expand into carefully handpicked locations all around the world.
With the popularity of our existing restaurants it’s clear that we’ve hit on a winning formula. We see this as being the go-to steakhouse in Brickell City and we’re sure it’s going to be incredibly popular and attract an eclectic crowd. It takes its inspiration and vibe from the original outlet in Stellenbosch and features foods that celebrate South Africa’s heritage, including some of my personal favourites! It also has lots of dishes that embody the best of Florida’s seafood and Latin influences and an open kitchen restaurant and sizzling grill serving some of the finest steaks in town. And we’ll also have the full portfolio of Ernie Els Wines on the menu…obviously! For more information or to make a reservation at any of our Big Easy restaurants, please click here.
That’s it for now. I’ll write again soon. In the meantime, follow me on Twitter @TheBig_Easy.
