Million Dollar memories

No-one had ever seen Nick Price, golf’s ultimate gentleman, that angry. His clear blue eyes were ablaze with fury and a torrent of invective spewed from his mouth. It was so out of character and the worst thing was that I was the target of his violent displeasure.

Price was brandishing a Press cutting which he thrust in my face. “You called me a jerk! You called me a jerk! I’ll never speak to you again!’ with which he slid onto a golf cart to be whisked away while the gathered throng looked at me with such distaste that I thought I might be hurled into the pool of the main hotel and left there to drown.

This incident, which took place in 1991, was brought back to mind by the resumption of a column for the Financial Mail – something which I did for some ten years in another lifetime.

The object of Price’s scorn was a piece I had written in the FM ahead of that year’s “Million Dollar” – to use the name that clings to an event that, amazingly, will run to its 27th edition at Sun City this week.

It was meant to be a spoof. About fishing. You see I have never really understood the allure of trying to catch a fish on a hook and found it staggering that Price had missed out on the tournament because he had broken a thumb while fiddling about in a boat on Lake Kariba.

With this one foolish accident the golfer had cost himself a minimum of US$ 100 000 – i.e. the amount paid to the man finishing last in the 12-man field.

I was trying to be flippant and funny, and included the line (hardly an original!) that to me fishing was just a jerk on one end of the line waiting for a jerk on the other. But my how it backfired!

Price, the most placid of men whose conduct throughout his career stands as an example of all that is good in golf, took umbrage. He had been brought to the Press room, which in those days was installed within the confines of the pump room next to the original hotel’s pool, to chat to us scribblers but he was sidetracked by my presence – to the extent that I had to suggest we continue the discussion (more like a haranguing) outside.

It was an innocent, if thoughtless, mistake which I believe was probably sparked by Ken Rosevear, in those days the head honcho of Sun International, who had driven Price to the media briefing, showing him the FM cutting and possibly putting a different spin on the “jerk” connotation.

Fortunately Price and I were able to smooth things over – enabling me to report Price’s side of the story the following year when he was disqualified because of a rules infringement involving an advertising hoarding and rejoice with him when he won what was by then the Nedbank Challenge for the first of his three times with a superb 24-under-par score in 1994.

The golf tournament has gone from being a gimmick to help to launch Sol Kerzner’s playground in the sun, to a serious shootout for the good and the great of the game, to an exercise in sanctions busting and finally to its current guise as the biggest corporate gathering in the country and in many people’s estimation the best party of the year.

For me it is always a signal that the year is over – and what a year it has been. Being at the Rugby World Cup in France was, in a word, magnifique so I have little doubt the topic of conversation will be of the oval ball rather than the dimpled one.

It really is quite staggering to think that it has happened “over the first weekend of December” for 27 years during which time every golfer who achieved some international significance trod Gary Player’s course which at the time of its conception was as revolutionary as Kerzner’s idea to establish a Xanadu in the African bush.

The tournament which started in 1981 as the “Million Dollar”, because that was the prize fund for the first event, featuring just five players in Player, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Seve Ballesteros and Johnny Miller, and evolved into the Nedbank Golf Challenge was the first to pay $1-million to its winner (Ian Woosnam scooping the pool in a winner-take-all format in 1987) and the first to up that figure to $2-mil – to mark the Millennium in 2000 and claimed by Ernie Els.

Although these days it is rivaled by any number of events around the globe it is still one of the biggest winner’s cheques around but, such is the wordwide boom in golf (which has claimed the Chinese as its latest converts) that it is still no guarantee that the best – i.e. Tiger Woods – will turn up.

One of the great debates, which seems to crop up whenever the aficionados, some of whom have either been to all or most of the tournaments, gather is which year sported the best field.

My favourite tournament will always be the first – when Johnny Miller beat Seve Ballesteros in a nine-hole playoff that crackled with the electricity of the spectacular thunderstorms that flash, boom and crackle around the Pilanesberg.

For me the best of times was Price’s record-setting win in 1993, when he shot rounds of 67 66 66 65 for a total of 264, and when Els topped that score by one in 1999 with rounds of 67 66 64 66. I loved it when the eagles and birdies were flying and the players were showing just how much better than the rest of us they are rather than the recent tendency (driven by Player) to set the course up US Open style; a sort of hell in the inferno of an old volcanic crater.

The greatest field? Unfortunately one that I didn’t see – so I don’t have a shirt to show for it! - because I was at Twickenham watching the Springboks go down 7-13 to England and thus failing to set a world record of 18 consecutive test victories.

1998 was the year Tiger Woods came to Africa – largely, I suspect, because his late father Earl wanted the photo opportunity of two of the most famous black men on the planet – Eldrick Woods and Nelson Mandela.

Woods chipped in to force a tie with Nick Price; only to succumb to a birdie from the Zimbabwean in the ensuing playoff. The rest of the field consisted of Mark O’Meara (the Masters and British Open champion of that year), Ernie Els, Jim Furyk, David Duval, Lee Westwood, Bernhard Langer, Jesper Parnevik, Justin Leonard, Colin Montgomerie and, for the only time, Tom Watson.

The most memorable? 1991. Not only had I just returned to newspapers from the corporate world, not only had I run over Nick Price’s line but there was the unforgettable (and unprepossessing) sight of Ian Woosnam, Steve Elkington and John Daly, all shirtless, singing “Wild Thing” at the Thursday night welcoming party en route to Daly, his head lolling, having to be carried out of the Salon Privé by four security guards.

And then there was… but perhaps we should leave it that. Don’t want to run the risk of having any cuttings stuck in my face again!

Also appeared in the Financial Mail of November 28.