Andy Capostagno golf
Woodhill Country Club in Pretoria celebrates its second birthday in style this week by hosting the South African PGA Championship. Through a deal with the Sunshine Tour, Woodhill will be the host for South Africa’s second-oldest event for the next three years. The prize fund is R1-million, which might appear small potatoes when set against the money-spinning events of the past three weeks, but everybody has to start somewhere.
Of course, some might say that the fact that a tournament first played in 1923 should have to start again is scandalous, and some might be right. Two years ago the South African PGA was tied to the Alfred Dunhill Championship at Houghton, an event that for three years had been co-sanctioned by the European Tour.
The PGA decided that not enough local club pros were being invited to the event and, after trying to negotiate with Alfred Dunhill, withdrew their support from the tournament, saying words to the effect of: “The world shall hear from us again.” Except that it didn’t hear from them last season and, until six weeks ago when the Sunshine Tour put together a plan, it looked like being another quiet year. Now the club pros have their wish (at least 12 of them will be trying to make the cut this week) and, happily, a tournament with a roster of winners that includes Ernie Els, Nick Price, Tom Weiskopf, Gary Player and Bobby Locke is back where it belongs, on the schedule. Appropriately enough a fine portrait of Locke at his most dapper and benign hangs in the Woodhill Clubhouse bar. Appropriate not just because he is a past champion, but because this relatively short course with receptive greens is likely to reward the best putters, and there has never been a better putter than Locke. The early starters on Thursday were rewarded with pleasant, windless conditions and among those who took advantage was Darren Fichardt, the runner-up in last year’s South African Open, who, starting at the 10th hole, birdied the first three he played, bogeyed the fourth and with two more birdies went out in 32, four under the card. The early clubhouse leaders were Chris Williams, the Englishman who plays out of Modderfontein, and Don Gammon who, like his father Muss, is attached to the World of Golf practice facility in Woodmead. Williams would have been clear but for a bad start to the back nine where he bogeyed the 10th and found the water with his tee shot to finish with a double bogey five at the 12th. But, after an opening half of 32, he finished with four birdies in his last six holes to join Gammon whose 66 was bogey free.
With conditions remaining benign there was no reason to believe that either would hold the lead once the field had completed its first round and a winning score of -20 is not impossible.