The already long Sun City course is playing even longer for the elite field this week
Michael Vlismas
The English weather that has descended upon the Pilanesberg is obviously the reason Lee Westwood is able to overlook both his own dismal form and that of his racehorse this year in the hope at least one of them will come good in this week’s Nedbank Golf Challenge.
Westwood arrived at a wet Sun City having just watched his horse struggle through a few runs on South African soil. “So how is your horse running at the moment?” Dale Hayes asked him at dinner on the eve of the first round.
“It’s running like your team’s playing rugby at the moment,” was Westwood’s reply.
The seven European golfers in the exclusive 12-man field competing for a first prize of $2-million were certainly welcomed in the manner to which they are accustomed.
Since Monday, the Gary Player Country Club course has been soaking up steady rain with the result that a layout that has already been lengthened by 200m is playing even longer.
On the plus side, the traditionally lightning-quick greens will certainly be the most receptive they can be with all the rain.
But the biggest concern for the field is the rough that jealously guards this magnificent collection of fairways.
“It’s probably growing out there as we speak,” said Ernie Els, poised to become the first player in the tournament’s 21-year history to win three successive titles, before a practice round.
His report back after the round confirmed this. “I could see a lot of rough, a lot of long rough,” Els said.
It was during Wednesday’s pro-am that one of the amateurs in Els’s group pulled his tee shot into the rough left of the green at the par-three 16th.
The ball landed only about 10m away from one of the marshals, who strode confidently over to the spot where it disappeared, and then spent at least a minute trying to find it.
So the course is certainly in a strong position to exact some retribution for Els’s two triumphs of 20- under par 268 and 25-under par 263, a noticeable leap from the maximum of 15-under par 273 which lead the scoring from 1995 to 1998.
“I don’t think you will see a 25- under winning this week,” Els said.
In fact, Dennis Bruyns, the man responsible for the set-up of the course, has a figure of 16-under par in mind for this year’s event.
But as Els goes in search of history, there is one title he will gladly relinquish this week and that is the burden of being the local favourite for the past nine years.
Retief Goosen, he of the magical year that sparked more Golden Goose clichs than even Old MacDonald could manage, is the man with the task of fulfilling the high local expectations on him to become only the fifth golfer to win on debut here.
Goosen has some experience of this course, finishing second behind Irishman Darren Clarke in the Dimension Data Pro-Am earlier this year.
But his greatest obstacle will be a travel schedule that has taken him from Japan to Hawaii to Hartebeespoort and then to Sun City in the past four weeks.
Young Spaniard Sergio Garcia returns as a much more mature golfer, he says, and with an even keener eye for South African women, while Colin Montgomerie the last of the European golfers who have won seven of the past 20 Nedbank Golf Challenges believes it’s all going to come down to putting this week.
For the likes of Westwood, it is simply a question of horses for courses in an event where he lost in a play-off to Els last year and on a layout where he won the Dimension Data Pro-Am in 1999.
The one man who had the least to say was Canadian Mike Weir. The man recognised as the best left- hander in the game at the moment was the last to leave the practice range in incessant rain late on the eve of the first round.
But perhaps that says the most about what it will take to win this week.