Part 6
Last week, one of my dear readers made a statement on Twitter, stating that he struggles to see the societal benefit of greater access to golf. This is a fair statement, and I can understand why the Tweeter feels this way. While I intended to touch on this issue in a later iteration of this series, there’s no better time than the present, right?
My response to this statement is two-fold: greater access will lead to fair and equitable representation in the sport; and fair representation will afford a fair chance to all at achieving professional success in world golf. Bear in mind however, that success is relative.
Addressing the first benefit of greater access to golf, namely equitable representation, generously speaking, we currently have approximately 10% black South Africans on the Sunshine Tour. By deduction, then this means there’s only a 10% chance for a person of colour (POC) to win a Sunshine Tour event. Is this fair when one considers the demographic composition of South Africa? Thus, representation is vitally important because it actively demonstrates to similar audiences that success, for them, in a particular sport or vocation is possible.
Continuing from the 10% representation stat, there’s also then only a 10% chance for a POC to plough some of his winnings into the ongoing development within and beyond his community. This is because most top-performing golfers establish a Foundation to finance and sustain any advocacy and social upliftment work that’s important to them – many of which involves some kind of grassroots golf development.
But you might ask yourself, how much money could they possibly earn that could enable them to make a meaningful difference to society? Besides endorsements that leading golfers earn, how do average golfers earn money? I will attempt a very rudimentary explanation of this. The Sunshine Tour total purse value (prize fund) for all events throughout the duration of a season is approximately R100 million Randelas. All players who make “The Cut” get a piece of this pool of prize money – I’ll explain more about “The Cut” later.
A golf tournament takes place over three or four days, traditionally from Thursday to Sunday and consists of anywhere between 50 – 216 players per tournament. You must earn your spot in a Sunshine Tour event by winning or finishing high enough on the log of a qualifying event to earn your Tour Card – of which there are 20 categories, each with different benefits. Think of this card as your MyCiti card, no card, no ride.
Once you qualified for your Tour Card, you need to make “The Cut” to get paid. Depending on whether it’s only a Sunshine Tour event, a co-sanctioned or tri-sanctioned event with the DP World and/or Asian Tours, the cut usually consists of the top 40 – 65 players (and ties) after two rounds. It’s these players who earn a share of the tournament prize fund, with the winner taking the lion’s share. I mean, what other sport pays you for coming 65th? That’s how hard golf is!
This past weekend, we watched the PGA Farmers Insurance Open take place at Torrey Pines in San Diego, California. The lowest-ranked player, after 72 holes (4 days of golf), was placed 79th but still earned himself a handy $15 708.00 for a week’s work. That’s approximately 240K at today’s exchange rate.
Making the cut every tournament isn’t that easy though. Tiger holds the record for most consecutive cuts made, 142! The longest current streak of consecutive cuts made is 20, by Jordan Spieth – a former World number 1 golfer. And that streak ended at last week’s Farmers Insurance Open when he failed to make it into the weekend.
But if a South African can play well enough to make the cut every second tournament and then finish last each time for half of approximately 50 tournaments for the year, that’s a R6 Million Rand pay day for the year – for coming last! So handsome is the economic reward of playing golf “well”. It’s worth mentioning that we had a talented Saffer playing in the Farmers Insurance tournament last week, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, who finished 46th and earned a modest $22K and some change for his time there.
Allow me to share some numbers with you as presented by Forbes Africa late last year, numbers one can easily do a Zuma on, illustrating the combined PGA and European/DP World Tour career earnings by leading South African golfers (Rounded down to the nearest million):
- Louis Oosthuizen$52mil
- Branden Grace$27mil
- Charl Schwartzel$22mil
- Dylan Frittelli$7mil
- Erik van Rooyen$6mil
I’m sorry, I digress. The point I’m drawing to is, how do we compete on this stage if we don’t have a seat at the table? Imagine if half of the South African’s listed above were POC from Mitchells Plain, Khayelitsha and KwaMashu? How much would they be able to plough back into their communities? How many kids like themselves could they inspire? Do you now see the potential societal benefit of greater access?
Please, I by no means make any attempt to take away any ounce of credit from any of these golfers – I admire them all with great respect. Erik maybe a bit more so because of his cool sense of style!
This, though, is why fair and equitable representation is necessary. Earned on merit, of course. But there should be no institutional or other obstacles in the paths of those seeking to earn it.
Follow Jehad’s Far From Par series every Tuesday.
Far From Par is a ten-part series about the grassroots development of golf in South Africa. For decades golf was a sport reserved for white men for both leisure and professional expression.
Sadly, after nearly 30 years of democracy, apart from it now being open to all, not much has changed to foster meaningful transformation.
This series explores his experience on the importance of challenges faced and status quo of grassroots golf development and transformation in South Africa.
If you’d like to find out more about Mitchells Plain Golf Club, here’s how to: www.mitchellsplaingolfclub.org.za or @mitchellsplain_golfclub on Instagram, or contact Jehad on +27 723654037 or [email protected]
IOL