Sun City has some aces in the pack

In golf at the moment there is Tiger Woods. and then all the rest. If you look at it this way then the Nedbank Golf Challenge to be played at Sun City at the end of the month has been trumped.

Trumped by Tiger Woods himself. By staging his Tiger Woods Foundation Williams World Challenge on exactly the same dates (November 30 to December 3) as the "Million Dollar" at the Sherwood CC in Thousand Oaks in California, Woods effectively split the list of possible players available to Nedbank and Sun International.

His own event will benefit by his considerable presence while his organisers have also taken insurance on a possible lack of publicity by inviting sports legends Wayne Gretzky and Bruce Jenner and show biz personalities such as Craig T. Nelson, Tom Selleck and Kenny G to their pro-am.

Yet, our own little bash in the African bundu has done pretty well.

To start with, "our" event will have the world's largest first prize of $2-million and a bigger total prize fund than the $3.5-million event and $1-million first prize in Tiger's tournament.

And when it comes to the participating field Sun City has arguably a more interesting bunch - not counting Tiger that is.

Lining up in Tiger's event (with world rankings in brackets) will be: Woods (1), David Duval (4), Davis Love (7), Hal Sutton (8), Tom Lehman (10), Vijay Singh (11), Jesper Parnevik (12), Sergio Garcia (14), Justin Leonard (18), Stewart Cink (19), Fred Couples (37) and his old buddy Mark O'Meara (69).

Against this Sun City has: Ernie Els (2), Lee Westwood (5), Colin Montgomerie (6), Darren Clarke (9), Nick Price (13), Jim Furyk (15), Michael Campbell (16), Thomas Bjorn (17), John Huston (20), Carlos Franco (23), Miguel A. Jimenez (24) and Jose Maria Olazabal (34).

Interestingly, this means that if you were to take world ranking points as a "value," the Nedbank Golf Challenge has a better net worth than Tiger's event with a total of 164 points as opposed to 210 for the American tournament.

The number is obviously skewed by the high numbers carried by Fred Couples and Mark O'Meara, but Sun City has arguably the more appealing field, while another big plus factor is that the "Million" has records and tradition having been in existence since 1981.

This latter point is extremely important as it gives the Nedbank Challenge a sense of legitimacy.

As hard as it is to appreciate, given that the annual golf tournament is one of South Africa's sporting highlights, the event is still viewed as something of an exhibition - an end of season hit-and-giggle not to be taken too seriously - by the movers and shakers who run the US PGA and European Tours

It is with in mind - and it impacts directly on the failure to invite Retief Goosen - that the organisers have stuck rigidly to a criterion for qualification.

They need to send out a message that the Nebank Challenge is a serious golf event to ensure that it is given genuine status by the various controlling bodies.

It is a simple formula really. Each year tournament director Alastair Roper sets out to ensure the presence of the defending champion, the four winners of the major championships (Tiger won three!) and after that he works his way down the world rankings.

Roper has to ensure that golfers "qualify" to play at Sun City; anything else would render the event an exhibition instead of a real golf tournament. It would be easy to break the rules and invite the like of crowd pleasers such as John Daly and even seniors such as Tom Watson and Hale Irwin but that would rapidly strip the event of its authenticity.

There can be no sentiment, and that, simply, is why there has been no invitation for Retief Goosen. "The Goose" is currently 38th on the official world golf ranking. Had he been in the top 25 he would, almost certainly, have been asked to tee it up on November 30.