Fulton Allem hasn’t changed that much. He says ”partner” a lot more than ”boet”, the legacy of spending the majority of his life in the United States. He talks of the ”North Eastern Transvaal”, and still loves Phalaborwa, where he wants to retire to a game farm on the Olifants river. And he still knows how to put on a show.
Allem was like the prodigal son of the fairways as he arrived at the Woodhill Country Club this week for the Telkom PGA Championship, the start of the lucrative eight-tournament summer leg of the Sunshine Tour.
”Unbelievable, partner. Absolutely unbelievable,” Allem said of the welcome he received upon returning to local fairways for the first time since he played in the 1997 South African Open at Glendower.
”To see the people that know and love you, and they still love you. The players, the caddies, everybody’s saying, ‘Welcome home. It’s great to have you back’. It’s such a great feeling to be able to set foot back home. It’s my roots. This is where I’m from. I have never given up my citizenship here and I have no desire to do so.”
The 45-year-old Allem was quite emotional about his homecoming, and spoke at length about how proud he is to be South African, and his need to give something back to the local game.
”I think our country is on the road back up again. But I’d like to see our golf get up there again. We need to get a lot more tournaments going here in the course of the year because I believe we’ve got six or seven Tiger Woods somewhere in this country.
”I would like to see a lot more being done for junior golf in South Africa. That will be my real key promotion while I’m here.”
Allem also had a bit of advice for the running of the professional game. ”I don’t want to criticise anything, but at the moment we’ve got a two-tournament money list, the South African Open and the Dunhill Championship. You win one of those and you win the Order of Merit. It’s a little lopsided.”
But after a few bouts of seriousness, Allem soon slipped back into the more
comfortable role of entertainer.
”This is such a great tournament,” Allem said of the PGA and his two
previous victories in 1987 and 1990. ”I remember, in that first PGA victory, I holed a putt on the 16th playing against Hugh Baiocchi. When I hit that putt I hit it so hard it hit the back of the hole and it must’ve gone four inches in the air and just dropped straight down. Baiocchi had a six-footer behind the hole for par and he looked up and said, ‘Well thanks, you’ve just moved the hole closer’.
”My other memory of this tournament is walking up the 18th in that first win
with absolutely no saliva in my mouth. I mean, I was droogbek.
”But now it’s time for the youngsters to do something. They’re the ones that
are going to make us proud when we get older and say, ‘Yeah, look at those
little South Africans. They can still kick arse’.”
Unbelievable partner. Absolutely unbelievable.