Andy Capostagno golf
There are several reasons to celebrate the resumption of the Sunshine Tour this week. A month has passed since Trevor Immelman held off Ernie Els and Titch Moore in the Players Championship at Royal Cape and we can now look forward to seven successive weeks of local golf.
First up it’s the return of two old favourites, the 80-year-old South African Masters and the Wild Coast Sun Country Club. The two have combined to present the Nashua Nedtel Cellular Masters, which boasts a total purse of R1-million.
The Wild Coast may not be the best golf course in South Africa, but it is unquestionably the most spectacular. Designed by the celebrated Robert Trent Jones jnr, the course plays to a par of 70 thanks to the unusual inclusion of no fewer than six par threes.
It is frequently a photographer’s delight as well as a golfer’s nightmare. Photographers will cherish the view from the sixth green where the bridge across the Umtamvuna river marks the old border between Natal and the Transkei.
Golfers will tremble at the view from the tee at the 13th where a natural waterfall tumbles into a vast ravine in such a manner as to make the 146m tee shot seem more like 346m.
They are frequently aided in imagining devils by the one ingredient that marks out the Wild Coast ahead of any other domestic course, with the possible exception of Humewood in Port Elizabeth. That ingredient is the wind.
If there is no wind the course is as friendly as a little puppy. In 1987 a week of perfect weather allowed Tony Johnstone to win the Wild Coast Classic with a score of 262, 18 under par. Johnstone’s score was 17 shots better than Mark McNulty’s winning total the previous year when the wind blew.
The worst tournament conditions came in November 1994 when on the final day the wind blew the flags out of the holes and players had to run after their putts to mark their ball before it was blown back to them. In the circumstances Hendrick Buhrmann’s final round of 69 was regarded as little short of miraculous and he ended five shots ahead of an illustrious second-placed pairing of Ernie Els and Trevor Dodds.
Els is absent this week, but Dodds, Buhrmann, McNulty and Johnstone are all present, together with Retief Goosen who, ranked 39 in the world, is technically the tournament favourite. If he were to win this week Goosen would be able to add the South African Masters to his impressive CV, the tournament that in the past completed the triumvirate of local ”majors” alongside the South African Open and the PGA.
But even with his experience in Europe Goosen may have to give second best if the wind blows. Experience tells us that McNulty always challenges in severe conditions and last year he shot a final-day 61 to win a tournament at the same venue.
If not the evergreen Zimbabwean, however, the winner may come from one of the two young turks who built their swings in the wind of the Cape, Immelman and Jean Hugo.