SA golf’s Golden Goose

Retief Goosen, the 101st United States Open golf champion and the third South African to hold the title, will definitely be invited to play in this year’s US$2-million Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City.

That is just one of the things that are going to be changing for the boy from Pietersburg who traveled to the Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, virtually at the geographical centre of America, to enter the pantheon of golfing gods.

By beating a brave Mark Brooks in an 18-hole play-off, the same route that Gary Player and Ernie Els took to winning the US Open, Goosen won a record first prize of $900,000 and, as a major winner, assured himself of an invitation to the “Million Dollar.”

For the past two years there has been some dissatisfaction that Goosen has not been among the select 12 asked to stroll the fairways of the Gary Player Country Club, but always his world ranking (44th before Monday night’s play-off) was deemed to be just too high to satisfy the tournament’s criteria for invitation.

Nedbank and Sun International executives do however try to invite the four major champions and the “Golden Goose” has now joined that exclusive club – the fifth southern African after Bobby Locke, Gary Player, Nick Price and Ernie Els to win one of the four majors.

In one fell swoop – or should that be many throat-constricting golf shots such as “that” missed putt on the 72nd hole of regulation play – Goosen’s life has been utterly transformed.

In fact the change in his status will be so dramatic that he could, if so wished, tell the men from the Nedbank Challenge to shove their invitation and tee up in Tiger Woods’ annual jamboree instead.

It is doubtful that he would choose to do this, given that he loves to play at home, but in terms of his status as a golfer the accrued benefits of winning the US Open through a whole string of exemptions (to the US PGA Tour and to the other majors) will outrank anything that might be on offer when the big tours go off-line in December.

Having turned 32 in February, Goosen’s big breakthrough came some seasons after most golfing aficionados had written off his chances of ever achieving the heights of his boyhood opponent and compatriot Ernie Els.

It also came in spite of the most unlikely of build-ups. Going into the US Open Goosen was in 35th place on the European Order of Merit and his visits to America were singularly unsuccessful with just one cut made in four starts. Although a regular winner he could point to only four European Tour titles (three of them won in France, including that country’s Open) and only two wins on the main part of the Sunshine Tour – including the 1995 South African Open.

The rest of his wins came in minor events although he was a prolific gatherer of cash to lie 20th on the European Tour’s career money list with earnings of Euro3,800,090. He had done extremely well in the Alfred Dunhill Cup at St Andrews – the medal/matchplay formula probably standing him in good stead in Monday’s play-off – but he had never seriously threatened to win a major.

All that changed at Southern Hills with an exceptionally courageous performance of playing in, or near, the lead for four days and then bouncing back from that nightmare on the 72nd green to win the play-off.

Introduced to golf by his father Theo, himself a handy golfer who worked as an estate agent in Pietersburg, Goosen showed early talent and was regarded as a bright prospect in a generation that included Ernie Els, his junior by eight months.

Although Goosen won the 1990 SA amateur and the 1992 European Tour qualifying school to build a solid pedigree his career developed in the giant shadow cast by Els.

There were times one felt he was ready to emerge as a major figure in his own right, such as when he went head-to-head with Els at Randpark in the final round of the 1995 SA Open to emerge a confident winner, but it seemed his shy, almost aloof, personality would always prove to be a drawback in brash America.

Significantly when Goosen paid tribute to those closest to him as he cradled the US Open trophy he referred to a “Jos” – Jos Vanstiphout the Belgian sports psychologist with whom he linked up after breaking his arm in a skiing accident in 1999 and who helped to give him such confidence in his game that he finished 5th on the merit list in ’99 and 15th in 2000 before reaching the ultimate pinnacle on Monday by making, like Els, the US Open his first win in the States.

And, judging by his grit under pressure at Southern Hills, it won’t be his last. There is finally “someone else” to take on the Americans and no-one will be happier for the company than Ernie himself.