Golfing girls shoot for the stars

In a country of remarkable golfing feats one of the most amazing went almost unreported recently, especially in the Sunday Press for whom such fairy tales should be grist to the mill, when Ashleigh Simon won both the SA women’s stroke play and match play titles.

To win the double at national championship week is remarkable at any time but to do it at the age of 14 is simply incredible.

Simon is the shining light among a crop of outstanding girl golfers who have dramatically raised the profile of women’s golf – a branch of the game that is said to be one of the fastest growing sports in South Africa.

Simon, who won her first Royal Johannesburg and Kensington club championship at the age of 12 and who last year became the youngest golfer, and one of the youngest in any sport, to represent South Africa in international competition, is ranked No1 by the SA Ladies Golf Union and heads a list of exceptionally talented teenagers.

Tanica van As, who is 17, won the Bell’s SA amateur double last year and boasts an amazing list of achievements while the like of Free State’s Lumien Lausberg, who has a plus two handicap at Schoeman Park, Stacy Bregman, Betty Makoena, Caitlin Beckwith and a host of other “superteens” are maintaining standards which suggest that the day cannot be far away when South African once again has a lady golfer to match the unrivaled Sally Little.

Little’s achievements are too often forgotten when South Africa’s incredible feats in international golf are listed, but it is worth recording that she won three ladies’ majors – the Du Maurier Classic in 1988, the Nabisco Dinah Shore in 1982 and the LPGA Championship in 1980 – 12 other LPGA titles and was the low individual in the 1971 World Amateur team championship.

Little, who also won the SA amateur double, was the 1971 LPGA Rookie of the Year and the successes of Simon and the rest of the fantastic young ladies of the links suggests that the men, who have always been right up there, will have to look to their laurels.