It’s the end of an era at Sun City this week. The ”Million Dollar” that inflation forced to become the ”Two Million Dollar” and then the ”Nedbank Golf Challenge” will have a celebratory party on Sunday night, before reappearing in a markedly different guise next year.
No one is prepared to reveal the sponsor’s plans for the tournament just yet, but there is a certain symmetry to the fact that Sunday will be the 100th round to be played in a tournament that is exactly a quarter of a century old. If you’re going to close the doors on an institution it seems as good a time as any.
When it began in 1981 the event was a bit of a hit and giggle, with celebrities such as Sean Connery and Telly Savalas regarded as every bit as important to its success as Jack Nicklaus, Seve Ballesteros and Gary Player.
A decade later, as South Africa emerged from isolation, the organisers were suddenly able to attract the top players on a more formal basis and so it became very grim and rather self-important. The nadir came in 1992 when Nick Price and Nick Faldo were both disqualified after their second rounds.
There were those who believed that the draconian sentences passed down by a dour American rules official were a good thing, that they validated the event as a proper golf tournament. In other words, if you didn’t behave yourself you got thrown out. But that was never what the Million Dollar was supposed to be about.
Ironically, that 1992 event marked the debut of Ernie Els, who was wangled an invite by his then agent having not yet won a tournament outside South Africa. Els played his first round with the big-hitting Fred Couples and, when asked in the subsequent press conference how his length compared with ”Boom-Boom”, memorably replied: ”I don’t know, I didn’t shower with him.”
Els’s subsequent surge up the world rankings allowed the organisers to bask in the glow of a guaranteed top-five player every year. It also put thousands more bums on grass verges than would otherwise have been the case.
But, by the end of the millennium, there was no doubt that the Sun City event was rapidly becoming an anachronism.
Reality bites and in the first decade of the 21st century everyone concedes that a 12-man field that does not include Tiger Woods is not really an elite event at all, but a pre-Christmas fund-raiser for a few lucky men already rich beyond the dreams of most mortals.
All of which should not take the gloss off this year’s valedictory effort. Tiger is absent and so are the other members of the world’s top three — Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson. But the other seven of the top 10 are present and Els is returning to the game after a 20-week break following knee surgery.
As always, the majestic course will be in immaculate condition, and if there are more people thronging the air-conditioned hospitality tents than the fairways, then that’s just the way of the world these days. So shed a tear for the passing of an institution, hope like hell for a new event worthy of the name and, above all, remember the fun we had.