Ice cold in the Pilanesberg

When a place is named Sun City what do you expect? Heat. Sweltering, skin singeing rays of sun that leave you so parched that getting hold of an ice-cold coollie that burns down your throat becomes the greatest craving in the world.

You know the feeling. Sweaty, hot and uncomfortable as you come off the course, desperate for that first drink, and then sheer pleasure and relief of the first few gulps of a long cool drink.

And, since you're wondering, this is not an ad for a softdrink or beer company. It's what came to mind when I sat down to write about how my view of the golf tournament has radically changed since seeing it from a different perspective.

Last year I was the reporter in the video Peter Treahaven made of the event and this year I have been to behind-the-scenes planning meetings by dint of the tournament website being hosted by the SuperSport Zone.

What an eye-opener it's been. There was a time that the Nedbank Golf Challenge, or the "Million Dollar" to use it's generic name, was a chance to indulge in my love of golf, see some great players and attend some grand parties.

Now I know differently. I can't think of the tournament without letting my mind stray to millions of ice cubes - and it has nothing to do with wanting to be cool.

They say it is the little things that make the biggest impression and what brought home to me the immense amount of blood, sweat and tears (literally) that go into staging the Nedbank Challenge were the ice cubes.

We were filming in the kitchens - from which Sun City could feed a small country let alone an army! - when the head chef casually mentioned that one of his annual problems was seeing to it that all the hotels, outside pubs and sponsors' marquees had enough ice.

Pause for a minute to contemplate how much ice is needed to see to it that "on the rocks" means what it is supposed to. Can you imagine a lunchtime G&T without a couple of soothing blocks of frozen water?

>From ice cubes it is an easy mental leap to "frosty" and "bitterly cold" and the amber-coloured liquid without which the tournament - and most any sports event - just would not be the same. Now stop to consider how many freezers might be required to keep thousands of pints of the good stuff chilled in the bowl of extinct volcano!

That is why I now have such respect for the people who make the Nedbank Challenge work.

I used to arrive, check in, pick up my accreditation, choose a spot in the Press centre - which is now where the bowling rink you used to be under the Main hotel but at various times occupied the pump room alongside the Main hotel's pool and the squash courts - before getting down to covering some golf.

Now I find myself counting PC's and noticing the television sets rather than just the images on them.

For this year's tournament Marius Yssel, Sun City's manager of information systems, has laid on 50 additional personal computers so that spectators can access information at the various kiosks dotted around the course, administration services and the PR function can be kept up to the date, the Press can know what's going on and sponsors can have ready access to the facts and figures of the golf competition.

The scoring system is a massive undertaking marshalled by Dave Milton and the Nomads, without whose contribution the television broadcast and news dissemination would grind to a halt.

Ah the TV. Now there's another function that has left me wide-eyed with amazement since I've been more closely involved.

Marius Yssel has laid on another 125 television sets so that spectators and Press can watch the action from pretty much anywhere they happen to be. In fact, I've always maintained that the best way to watch the golf is to go to the practice tee in the morning to glean some tips, perhaps hang about the bank behind the 9th green to watch field turn and then beat a hasty retreat to some cool place with food and drink and a television set.

The logistics of an outside broadcast of this magnitude are mind-boggling; requiring nearly 200 crew members, each with a crucial role to play, some 35 stationary cameras, endless kilometres of cable, many mobile cameras, sound and lighting experts, myriads of scaffold platforms, several golf buggies, the use of a helicopter and the erection of a giant artificial palm tree to house transmitting equipment.

This year SuperSport will be broadcasting on seven different channels - enabling the viewer to watch any of the two-balls at all times if he so chooses - and it will require a small army of producers, directors, commentators, cameramen and various other technicians to mount the entire project.

And that's not all. Apart from the SuperSport crew, Nedbank, Sun International and all the co-sponsors are hard at work preparing to host, feed, accommodate and entertain thousands of guests in what is a truly awesome undertaking.

Forget the golfers, who in any case are spoilt and pampered as royalty, the real par-busters at Sun City are the workers who slave away at whatever they are doing for many hours to make sure it all comes together.

It's to them that I lift my (ice cold) glass and say: Cheers!