Michael Vlismas GOLF
Harvey Penick, the legendary golf teacher, once said: “No pretty woman can miss a single shot without a man giving her some poor advice.”
It is for this reason that a certain golf correspondent kept his mouth shut while watching Joanne Norton practice her putting earlier this year. Norton was struggling to hole putts in about the one metre range. The fact that this rising star of South African women’s golf was successfully holing from the 7m to 8m also had something to do with the correspondent’s sudden muteness.
But it was more that the one thing the ladies of the fairways have proved over the years is that they are quite capable of making a significant mark in a male- dominated sport.
Se Ri Pak burst on to the international scene as the female equivalent of Tiger Woods when the Korean became the second- youngest player to win two major championships in her rookie year. Laura Davies is a veritable superstar on the LPGA Tour, dominating with her prodigious length and a short game to match.
In South Africa Norton is one of a growing band of women golfers who are ushering in a new era in the sport. Andrea Hirschhorn, Cherry Moulder, Sonia van Wyk and Zoe Grimbeek are all walking a well- trodden path pioneered by the likes of Mandy Adamson and Laurette Maritz.
The launch this year of the Vodacom Ladies Professional Golf Tour (LPGT) has attracted the attention of such a high- power sponsor as Nedbank, and managed to lure players such as Italy’s Federica Dassu and Claire Duffy of England to these shores.
The five-tournament tour teed off in March with the Ladies’ South African Open and comes to a close this week when the Ladies’ Masters gets under way at Kyalami Country Club.
Rather than trying to rival tours in the United States and Europe, the LPGT aims to provide especially European players with a chance to hone their games in the sunshine before the start of their season later this month.
Prize money on the tour ranges from R40 000 to R150 000, which is a pittance when compared with the purses played for in other parts of the golfing globe. But when you take into account that a local field is usually only 30 players strong, then the prize money goes quite a long way.
In South Africa, though, these new sponsorships have brought the women’s tour closer to the men’s circuit, where purses are anywhere between R100 000 and R500 000. This week’s Ladies’ Masters set a new benchmark in South African women’s professional golf with a record purse of R150 000.
Norton tops the LPGT’s Order of Merit with earnings of R33 320 in four events, one of which was a maiden professional victory in the Nedbank Mastercard Classic. Earnings of this magnitude would place her in eighth position on the men’s Order of Merit, so the gap between the golfing sexes is not that great.
History will be made this year when South Africa competes in the inaugural Ladies’ World Cup of Golf in Ireland in September. The two-player team will be announced this weekend.
n An extinct volcano began rumbling again for the first time since 1981.
The announcement that the Million Dollar Challenge will now become the Two Million Dollar Challenge has had pretty much the same effect it did when the prestige invitation tournament was first played 18 years ago.
Then the world’s press declared it obscene to play golf for so much money. But the rapid increases in prize money worldwide has ensured that a $1-million first prize is no longer the novelty it was. Invitation tournaments like Tiger Woods’ own million-dollar event threatened the survival of the Sun City showpiece.
The hike in prize money was aimed largely at America’s golfing stars, who were conspicuous by their absence from last year’s tournament and obviously need a little more financial encouragement to make the long trip to South Africa in what is essentially their off-season. The 2000 event will boast a total purse of $4,06-million, with the champion taking home a cheque for $2-million (around R14- million and climbing).
South Africa now, again, has the richest tournament in world golf. But, hey, that will probably be the case for only a month or so.