Els at a crossroads

The question posed in one of our recent polls – 'Will Retief Goosen’s victory in the US Open spur Ernie Els to better things?' – contains more relevance than a mere device to get readers of SuperGolf clicking on their mouse buttons.

There is little doubt that Ernie is facing something of a crisis of confidence at present and that he may well be at one of life’s crossroads.

His body language – albeit at the very long range of TV broadcasts – says he’s not enjoying what he’s doing and that he’d rather not be there.

This is quite understandable. The life of a golf professional is everything but glamorous. Living out of a suitcase, traipsing through airports and each week having to deal with a new set of people wanting your time can be extremely tedious and, having done it for all of his adult life, Ernie has the look of someone who wants to pack it in.

For all his outward serenity, which earned him the nickname the “Big Easy,” Els has never enjoyed the limelight plus the impositions enforced on him by the public and in the years that I have reported on him, and got to know him, I have formed the impression that a part of him does have the capacity to simply walk away from it all.

The pangs of home-sickness have been heightened by the arrival of his daughter while back pain is now his constant companion. Now 31, Els therefore seems to have reached point that he has to decide what it is that drives him and Goosen’s success in America may well draw it into focus for him – just as it did earlier in his career.

As a raw rookie professional in the early 90s Els had a reputation for quaffing beers and staying out with the boys and those of us who had seen golfing prodigies come and go wondered whether he would find the dedication to realise his immense talent.

Then two things happened. His good friend De Wet Basson won the Tournament of Champions at Fancourt in December 1991 and when the tour resumed in January Retief Goosen won the Spoornet Classic at Schoeman Park in Bloemfontein.

Both were contempories, as well as opponents, of Els’s throughout his junior career – Goosen in fact had been a teammate in the Northern Transvaal team when they did their military training – and their success seemed to be the spur he needed to go to the next level.

In the next three weeks he won the SA Open at Houghton, the Lexington PGA at the Wanderers and the SA Masters at Dainfern. At the age of 22 Els had achieved the first hat-trick of all three South Africa’s major titles since Gary Player did it at the age of 43 and it meant he had ascended an important base camp in his climb to the pinnacle.

Hopefully Ernie will have a similar reaction now that Goosen has emulated his feat of winning the US Open and that we’ll see his response as soon as the British Open that starts at Royal Lytham and St Annes on July 19.

Els finished second to Tom Lehman the last time the Open was held at Lytham in 1996 and he must surely be relishing the thought of returning to the rugged Lancashire links.