There was a time that South African golfers ruled the world — almost like the Springboks do now.
Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Trevor Immelman, Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel won seven majors between them in the first 12 years of this millennium.
But since then it’s been a drought which is threatening to go into its 12th year, the second-longest after the 16-year gap between Gary Player’s last in 1978 and Els’s first in 1994. And it is probably no coincidence that there has also been a famine for local golfers at the Nedbank Golf Challenge, dubbed Africa’s Major.
Branden Grace was the last South African to win at the Gary Player Country Club layout in 2017, and before him it was Immelman a decade earlier.
Can one of the home-grown contingent in the 2023 edition, starting at Sun City on Thursday, make it lekker for the locals?
The task has become more difficult since the event moved from a 12-man fiesta to a DP World Tour tournament with a field numbering more than five times that.
And making the prospect even tougher is that some classy players, including two Yanks, are entering the fray this year.
Max Homa, the 32-year-old American with six PGA Tour wins, is the highest-ranked player in the field, at eighth in the world. He was also the top-performing US player at the Ryder Cup in Rome, notching up 3.5 points, which was bettered only by Europe’s star, Rory McIlroy, on four.
Next up, with a ranking of 15th, is defending champion Tommy Fleetwood, the Englishman who comes in search of a hat-trick of titles.
David Frost did three, as did Nick Price, Els and Lee Westwood, but none achieved that consecutively.
Fleetwood, worth three points at the Ryder Cup, has been in decent nick. And then last year’s runner-up, Ryan Fox of New Zealand, is 27th, one spot ahead of the other American Justin Thomas, winner of two PGA Championships.
Fox, winner of the BMW PGA Championship in September, might have won last year’s NGC had he not stumbled on the final hole. He’ll be that much more familiar with a course that has been considered homeground advantage for the South Africans.
Johannesburg-born Englishman Justin Rose is 37th, while Adrian Meronk of Poland, 46th, is the highest-placed player on the Race to Dubai at No 3, one spot ahead of Fox. And then you get the likes of Frenchman Victor Perez, Finn Sami Välimäki and Marcel Siem of Germany, who have won tournaments this year.
South Africa’s leading hope is Thriston Lawrence, the only local golfer in the top 100 in the world, at a distant 95. He’s also 26th on the Race to Dubai rankings.
He boasts five wins on the DP World Tour to date, with the most recent being the BMW International Open in Munich in June. Since then, the SA Open champion has missed three cuts in 12 outings, ranging from tied third at the Irish Open in September, to tied for 74th at the Open in July.
It might not knock fear into the hearts of his rivals, but that run still earned Lawrence nearly €430,000 (R8.4 million). His win in Germany came after a frustrating period, during which he’d missed two cuts in three starts, including at the US Open the weekend before.
He cannot be discounted. He roared to life in the final two rounds of the BMW, enjoying support from a few South Africans in the crowd. Imagine what he could do in front of the partisan galleries.
His compatriots like Ockie Strydom, Louis de Jager, Hennie du Plessis and Danie van Tonder could also pull off a surprise.
Nobody is likely to bet their house on a South African triumph, but few people will bet against it either.
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