Golf
Golf in South Africa has a long and illustrious history and South Africa is one of the great golfing nations. Golf is easily the best individual sports event that South Africans participate in, with the quantity and quality of South African players being of the top order.
The first South African to win a major championship was Bobby Locke who won The British Open four times in 1949, 1950, 1952 and 1957.
The most famous of South African golfers is however Gary Player who along with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus dominated world golf for much of the 1960s and 1970s. Player won all four majors, winning the British Open in 1959, 1968 and 1974, The Masters in 1961, 1974 and 1978, the PGA Championship in 1962 and 1972 and the U.S Open just once in 1965. Player always played in his trademark black outfits and became one of the recognisable figures in the sport. He also enjoyed considerable success in senior golf, winning six majors on the Champions Tour (then the Senior PGA Tour) from 1986 to 1990. The only other South African to have won a senior major is Simon Hobday, winner of the U.S. Senior Open in 1994.
Current players who have won majors are 1994, 1997 U.S. Open and 2002 British Open Champion Ernie Els, 2001 and 2004 U.S. Open Champion Retief Goosen, 2008 Masters Champion Trevor Immelman, British Open Champion Louis Oosthuizen and 2011 Masters Champion Charl Schwartzel. Other notable players include Tim Clark with 2 Nationwide Tour wins and winner of the PGA 2010 Players Championship.
The country has had less success in women's golf. The only South African woman to have won a major was Sally Little, who won the LPGA Championship in 1980. Little later became a U.S. citizen and won a second major, the 1988 du Maurier Classic, as an American.
British golfer Justin Rose is South Africa-born, but was raised from age 5 in England, and chose to play his trade for that country.
Read more about this topic: Sport In South Africa
Famous quotes containing the word golf:
“My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Years ago we discovered the exact point, the dead center of middle age. It occurs when you are too young to take up golf and too old to rush up to the net.”
—Franklin Pierce Adams (1881–1960)
“emerald as heavy
as a golf course, ruby as dark
as an afterbirth,
diamond as white as sun
on the sea ...”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)