/ 28 November 1997

Els can answer Million Dollar question

Andrew Spencer : Golf

There is something very special about the Nedbank Million Dollar Challenge at Sun City. Perhaps it is the size of the seven- figure purse – in American money nogal – or the simple fact that this is an elite field on an elite layout carved out of a slice of unremitting African bush.

More likely it is that here, on South African soil, a dozen of the top golfers in the world have gathered to pit their skills against one another over 72 holes where there is no cut, no real losers in a format which, in many ways, owes more to the cut and thrust of matchplay than the unremitting and concentrated artistry of a medal competition.

There is more to it than the swarming crowds who make the edge of the fairways a seething footpath of jostling elbows and craning necks. There is far more than the upmarket gypsy encampment of corporate marquees or the race for the branded golf shirts and plastic panamas that bob like multi-coloured waves around the fringes of the action.

Golf is the centre point of a happening, a place to be, a venue to be seen at rather than carefully looked over and, if you have the clout to have been given a booking in even the most spare of Sun City’s rooms, something to use at dinner parties for the next six months. The Million Dollar, which starts at Sun City next Thursday, is the big one. The crowds know it and so do the players.

This year, despite the obvious fact that Tiger Woods and Greg Norman, the two most recognised faces in world golf, are missing, the field has all the potential to make it an event as memorable as last year.

Perhaps even more so if you take the somewhat cynical view that the appearance of Woods and Norman would only have increased the feeding frenzy to get close to the greats.

It is also the year the local public would have it that Ernie Els, their favoured son, is due a win. Certainly, coming off a second US Open and a joint victory with Retief Goosen and David Frost at St Andrews, the feeling must be that the man they call The Big Easy is due.

The tall South African is one of three current Major titleholders in the field alongside PGA champion Davis Love III and British Open winner Justin Leonard.

Els is no stranger to the Sun City spectacular. He has been there five times in the past with his best finish a second to last year’s winner, Scotsman Colin Montgomerie. This, though, you sense could be his year, as it was for Nick Price in 1993 when he shot a spectacular 24-under- par to devastate the field with a display of controlled playing prowess that was almost beyond belief.

Price is back and, like Els, playing in his sixth Million Dollar. It could have been more but a freak accident while fishing in Zimbabwe two years earlier ruled him out with a strained thumb.

Montgomerie also makes the return journey to try for his second big cheque and to defend the trophy he won last time out. He comes with all the credentials having finished top of the European Order of Merit for a record fifth year.

The Scot, nicknamed Montglummery for his glowering on-course demeanour, is with Price one of five former winners in the field. The others are the imperious Nick Faldo, the elegant and gentlemanly German Bernard Langer and the diminutive Welshman with the huge drive, Ian Woosnam.

The rest of the field is made up of Americans Tom Lehman, Mark O’Meara and left-hander Phil Mickleson, and the charismatic Swede Jesper Parnevik, who was on the losing end to the South Africans in the Swedish team at the Dunhill Cup.

Faldo and Langer are both veterans of the event, Langer a winner in 1985 and 1991 and, on his 12th appearance, the man who perhaps best typifies the best and worst of the event, having struggled home 21-over during the period when his graceful touch had deserted him entirely.

But unlike some of the also-rans who have featured in past fields, Langer stayed as courteous as ever, soldiering on and still managed to draw the galleries of those who knew that here was a man uncomplainingly fighting almost insurmountable odds and, though the leader boardwould have denied it, somehow managing to come out a winner.

Faldo has had nine tilts, adding only the 1994 victory to his string of five Major triumphs before going on to add his third US Masters in 1996 to the two green jackets and three British Open titles he already had to his name.

Woosnam, a winner at Sun City in 1988, three years before his Masters victory, is a popular figure at the Gary Player Country Club and, while his results have not always been as consistent as they might have been, is still capable of taking the field apart if the Welsh dragon within catches flame.

But this holds true of anyone in a hand- picked field with Lehman, O’Meara, Mickleson – who had a miserable baptism in his only other outing two years ago when he trailed the field home – and Parnevik, second to Leonard in the British Open, all capable of grabbing the money.

But perhaps the confrontation that everyone wants is that between two of the undoubted young stars of the global game – Els and Leonard.

It is an intriguing match-up. Els flows. Leonard is more mechanical and far less correct in his swing. But both are roundly respected and almost universally liked as people as well as players.

To crown either at the end of next week would carry the approbation of all but those they have managed to beat.