GOLF’SYEARINREVIEW
Andy Capostagno Tiger Woods had a poor year, winning just six times on the United States PGA Tour including the US Masters. That such a season could be described as one of underachievement underlines the way Woods’s astonishing talent has changed the way we think about the game. The fact is that Woods could have gone winless all year and still ended it as the world number one due both to the year he had in 2000 and the remarkable consistency of his play in the weeks when he doesn’t win. There are some great golfers around at the moment, but all of them are playing for second place if Woods brings his A game. Which makes it all the more pleasing from a South African perspective that Retief Goosen announced himself on the world stage in 2001. In 1992 Goosen won the European tour school and as much was expected of him as of Ernie Els. But while Els took the step up in his mid-20s, it took the more diffident Goosen a decade on tour to fulfil his talent. Significantly both men made the breakthrough by winning the US Open. Els won the first of his two US Opens in 1994, easing his way to victory in a playoff against Loren Roberts and Colin Montgomerie. Goosen also won in some comfort in a playoff, but there the similarity ended. At Southern Hills in June, Goosen had the chance to wrap things up in regulation play, but missed the kind of putt that habitually lips out in the monthly medal, but which professional golfers are expected to make with their eyes closed. It was the most talked about missed putt since Doug Sanders’s at St Andrews in 1970. To those who have watched Goosen down the years the twitchy stroke that set up an 18-hole playoff with Mark Brooks came as no surprise. What few could have predicted was the way the butterfly would emerge from the chrysalis the next day. Ever since he missed that two-foot putt, Goosen has been in contention every time he has pegged it up. He won twice more in Europe, becoming the first South African since Dale Hayes to win the European Order of Merit in the process, and in November won the World Cup with Els in Japan. The pair have both been on show to the South African public during the past month. Els lost the Nedbank Golf Challenge in a playoff against Sergio Garcia, and then beat Goosen into second place in the Players Championship at Royal Cape. Goosen will be playing in the SA Open at Durban Country Club in the second week of January, an event that was saved by the bell, as it were, when Bell’s Whisky agreed to sponsor it. The Open and the Alfred Dunhill Championship that follows it will be co-sanctioned by the European tour. It’s a quality start to what should be another quality year for South African golf.
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