Solid foundation

What do Ernie Els, Retief Goosen and Trevor Immelman have in common apart from the fact that they’re winners of Major titles?

The answer is that they were members of the South African Junior Golf Foundation who were given their competitive grounding in the regular competitions arranged by this enduring and inspiring organisation.

The role played by the Foundation to maintain South Africa’s quite amazing record as one of the leading golfing nations in the world was emphasised by both Dale Hayes and Thomas Aiken at the launch of a new series of tournaments for juniors.

Glacier, the upmarket financial services arm of Sanlam, announced the Glacier Junior Series, a countrywide series of 20 one-day regional junior events, each one sponsored and named after a professional golfer or golf industry leader.

Open to all members of the Foundation, each event’s winner will qualify for a national final to be held in late September at Wanderers Golf Club, the winner of which will be sent to the Orange Bowl Junior Invitational in Miami, Florida.

Current European Tour player Aiken, who became a member of the Foundation at the age of seven, spoke of the value of structured tournaments to prepare youngsters for a higher level of play while Hayes, himself a former member of the Foundation (some 60 years ago!), pointed out that all of South Africa’s modern champions had been schooled in the Foundation.

Hayes also made the telling point that when a similar scheme had existed in Zimbabwe that tiny country had produced a wonderful and amazing generation of golfers consisting of George Harvey, Teddy Webber, Mark McNulty, Nick Price, Dennis Watson and Tony Johnstone.

The key to the success of the Foundation is that youngsters not only learn proper values from an early age but are also schooled in the unique demands of medal – the card-and-pencil version which is the purest form of the game that just recently (in club championships played all over the country) has again reduced any number of golfers to anxious, depressed wrecks – including yours truly!

“We have had an enormously successful relationship with golf through the SA Amateur Championship,” Anton Raath, CEO of Glacier explained, “and in many ways, this move into junior golf makes all the sense in the world. In a nutshell, junior golf is an area that needs support. All our great champions were given opportunities as youngsters and if Glacier can provide more of those opportunities for the champions of tomorrow, then we will have made a meaningful impact on the game in this country.”

The 2010 Glacier Junior Series kicks off in the Easter school holidays and, in this inaugural year, will visit 10 of the SA Junior Golf Foundation’s 13 provincial divisions.

A praiseworthy aspect of the series is the number of former Foundation members who have rallied around to support the tournaments by coupling their names to events and promising either to be present or to provide prizes and encouragement for the next generation.

Many have chosen to support either the clubs they sprang from or clubs to which they are closely associated. Thus there will be an Ernie Els event at Oubaai, a Charl Schwartzel at Maccauvlei, a Thomas Aiken at the Wanderers, a John Bland at Irene, a Trevor Immelman at either Pearl Valley or Pecanwood, a Tim Clark at Umkomaas and a Sally Little at Royal Cape (seeing as her home club, Metropolitan, has been obliterated by the new stadium in Green Point)>

Others who have promised their support are the ever generous and endlessly enthusiastic Hayes, Mark Wiltshire, Selwyn Nathan, Dennis Bruyns, Louis Oosthuizen, Kevin Stone and Theo Manyama while Andrew McLardy has dedicated his event at Randpark to his father-in-law Tony Rice, a PGA professional of 50 years standing.

There will also be a tournament at Durban Country Club in honour of Papwa Sewgolum.