A short cut for the rough may have made the course easier, but this won’t detract from the victory of whoever ends up first in a quality-packed Million Dollar field
GOLF: Jon Swift
THERE has always been something very special about the Nedbank Million Dollar Challenge. There is the attraction of watching a select field battling it out over a layout carved out of the very heart of the South African bushveld. But mainly, it is the lure of the loot.
And while this year’s event starting on Thursday promises perhaps the best field ever assembled – you can’t really argue against that when the winners of all four majors will tee it up – there will be one distinct difference.
It is perhaps hard to imagine anyone recreating the special magic that Nick Price produced in 1994 when he had what is often an unforgiving layout on its knees, ending 72 strokes of play at an incredible 24-under par.
But, with the changes made to the course for this running of the annual extravaganza, it is not beyond the bounds of reason that one of the players in the invited 12-man field could come close. The reason for this is the decision by the tournament organisers to extend the first cut of rough to ensure a shot round the sand traps and the greens. It is a line of thinking that will probably please the players and the packed galleries, making for low scoring.
But it also is, in a sense, perhaps a cheapening of the very challenge that makes the Million Dollar such a special tournament. For it was the brilliance of Price’s recovery shots as much as his complete mastery of the more orthodox parts of his game that saw him card that record 264 and, somehow, ironing out some of the more troublesome nooks and crannies on the course reduces the challenge.
It was this challenge that brought Price back from a disqualification one year to the pinnacle the next. The amiable Zimbabwean is a welcome returnee this year and again a serious contender, even though he has dropped out of the world top 10.
Off the course, Price still manages to graft a grin on to a serious answer and marry a taste for a lager and a hamburger with his mates to a tortuous jet-set lifestyle. On the course it is all business.
The same lure of a challenge unfulfilled was one of the main forces which made the ever- popular German Bernhard Langer – a two-time winner – come back from one of the most tragic rounds in his courageous career. In 1988, in the middle of a crisis of the yips so bad it seemed his career was over, Langer battled his way through four rounds so far behind it was suggested he was playing a different course.
He refused to give up, and three years later, the cross-over putting grip a firm feature of his game, he came back to add the 1991 title to his opening triumph in 1985.
The imperious Englishman Nick Faldo, too, has tasted disappointment at Sun City, coming second three times before making the title his own in 1994.
Adversity has fuelled the desires of British Open champion Tom Lehman. His challenge was climbing out of the bargain basement of minor tours – our own South African circuit included – and making an indelible mark on the US PGA “Show” and global golf. The 37- year-old Arizona resident never gave up and his results over the past two seasons have shown the value of a determination – and a belief – to include success in his golf bag.
US Open champion Steve Jones is another who has fought back, this time from a motor- cycling accident to scale the higher reaches of the world’s golfing elite. The challenge was never lost to him.
So, too, reigning champion Corey Pavin, a diminutive master of the thinking man’s approach to the game and a man who has seen off the demands of tailoring a game to both outwit and outscore the bombers who slam it acres past him off the tee. He encapsulates the great and glorious enigma of golf, a game which defies the age-old dictum that a good big ‘un will always whip a good little ‘un.
But while Pavin might share a lack of altitude with Ian Woosnam, the little Welsh wizard with the enormous hitting prowess has tasted the fruits of victory in this event, winning the 1987 winner-take-all tourney, and only the rash would count the former amateur boxing champion out.
For our own Ernie Els and Scotland’s Colin Montgomerie there remains the inner summons to a contest they would both dearly like to win; Els because it has so far eluded him, Montgomerie to show that he can win in the big ones and not falter when the golden ring is proferred.
Neither can you discount the determination of the rest of the field. American veteran Mark O’Meara is always a threat. The near- million dollars he has banked on the US Tour this year is evidence of his abilities.
Neither does it pay to be dismissive of US PGA champion Mark Brooks or his fellow American Steve Stricker. Their joint string of triumphs this year provide ample proof that there is not a weak link in the field.
All challengers. All worthy contenders to contest the quest for the cheque that remains stranded in the stratosphere of dreams for the average citizen.
So, will the challenge remain intact this time round? There can be no question of this. But somehow, shaving the beard of what can sometimes be a monster, does not necessarily make for a cleaner sporting countenance.
This doubtless remains a personal – and a surely unpopular – view and one that will surely be lost in the hullabaloo of the chase for the million dollar winner’s cheque, and one which will be distant from the minds of the queues outside the betting stalls.
And this year, a punt on your personal favourite is no easy matter. There is literally no one in the field who cannot come home a winner next Sunday.
And whichever of the regal dozen lifts the cut-glass globe high above his head come Sunday night, nobody will question the route he has taken to membership of one of the most elite golf clubs in the world.
And this is as it doubtless should be.