Last month I had the pleasure of playing 18 holes with Zander Lombard and it made me feel very old. The young man from Pretoria was my opponent at the Sunshine Tour media day at Glendower, writes Andy Capostagno.
The subject of rugby came up, as it tends to do, and I asked Zander where he was on that famous day in 1995 when Joel Stransky dropped the goal that won the World Cup.
‘Well now,’ said Zander, ‘it was June, wasn’t it? So I would have been five months old. I can’t remember where I was, but I definitely watched it.’
This sort of thing is happening to me more and more. That, and forgetting what it was we were talking about. Now, where was I? Oh yes, feeling old. So it struck me – while I was watching Zander boom out a 370m drive – that a quarter of a century had passed entirely too rapidly since I covered my first Sunshine Tour event.
It was Royal Johannesburg, before Kensington joined in, November 1992. I had been in South Africa for two weeks when I was told that a host of newspapers and radio stations required my presence at the FNB Players Championship. So off I went to a championship golf course for the first time in my life. Nervous doesn’t begin to describe it.
I hunkered down in the press room, which in those wonderful times was a cordoned-off section of the members bar, complete with hot and cold running waiters. I waited until there was no one else around, to dictate my first report to the Daily Telegraph. These were the days before email, dear reader, when old ladies with pink rinses and horn-rimmed spectacles took down your purple prose on noisy typewriters.
These ladies had heard it all. You couldn’t shock them. They would say things like, ‘Yes … yes … spelling? … are you sure? … is there much more of this?’
So I was on the phone to Fleet Street, halfway through my copy when a tall, blond fellow strode in and asked if I had seen a reporter mate of his. I shook my head and he smiled, strolled to the bar and ordered a Castle. It was as I dictated the line, ‘Local favourite, Ernie Els, shot a four-under-par 68 …’ that I realised who the tall stranger was. ‘Els,’ I continued, ‘prospered despite being a diagnosed alcoholic …’
Ernie looked quizzically at me over his Castle and smiled. ‘Cancel that,’ I said. ‘Els prospered thanks to his extraordinary distance off the tee …’
When I put the phone down, Ernie placed a cold Castle in front of me and said, ‘We haven’t met. I’m Ernie.’ Thus began a friendship which continues to this day. I have the Sunshine Tour to thank for that.
I also have to thank them for another outstanding occasion at Glendower. Once again the Khan-Winter Trophy went to the pros who, despite having to surrender full handicaps plus four to their opponents from the fourth estate, won 24 1/2 to 19 1/2. The half was mine, by the way. Zander and I wrestled back and forth until, when I had reached the unassailable position of dormie three, he remembered how to putt, holing a seven-foot downhill slider at the last to complete his comeback.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Ernie shot 68, 68, 65, 69 at Royal Joburg, to beat Mark McNulty by four. It must have been the Castle.
