MY disappointment at missing the cut in The Open soon turned to pride over the weekend with young Louis Oosthuizen, a very good friend of mine and a former member of the Ernie Els & Fancourt Foundation, winning the Claret Jug in great style. He’s the fourth South African to win The Open, after Bobby Locke, Gary Player and myself and, honestly, it could not have happened to a better person. As Open Champion his life will change, but he won’t. He is simply a wonderful kid.
I played a practice round with him the Sunday before the Championship and, typically for him, he didn’t give himself a chance. He’s a quiet and unassuming type of guy, but at St Andrews he showed everyone what incredible talent he has and what a great champion he has become.
Obviously, I was very honoured that he thanked me in his victory speech and our Foundation for giving him his real start in golf, but he didn’t have to do that. The way he has made use of his opportunities since leaving our Foundation will always be thanks enough.
I don’t think I have ever been so proud! In starting the Ernie Els & Fancourt Foundation I wanted to give talented young golfers the same opportunities that I was given. We’ve had some successes already, but this Major win has exceeded my greatest expectations. Where, in your whole life, could you hope for a better story? Louis has shown what can be done and this will do so much for our members, past, present and future.
Experience
It was only last month that another of our former members, Kelli Shean, secured a place in the Women’s US Open by virtue of winning her qualifying tournament in St Louis. She went on to lead the tournament for much of the first day and, although she fell out of contention over the weekend, I know she will have learnt so much from the experience. Ultimately, it will make her better and stronger next time around.
I’d like to thank all the staff, my family and the Board of the Foundation for the wonderful work that they do. In a way, Louis’ win shows that we are doing the right thing and it shows that there are systems in place in South African golf that really work. We now have a fantastic group of young South Africans who are carrying the flag.
This is always an exciting time of the season with so many big events taking place.
Since I last wrote my last Column in Worldwide Golf we’ve played two Major Championships, the US Open and The Open Championship, with the USPGA Championship just around the corner.
Pebble Beach and St Andrews are two of my favourite golf courses in the world, so I couldn’t have been more excited about those two championships.
As soon as I arrived at Pebble Beach I liked my chances. I had worked extremely hard leading up to that week and I was comfortable that my game was right where I needed it to be for a Major.
| I love that golf course – it’s like links golf on steroids. It was playing firm and fast all week, which are conditions I always relish. The greens weren’t what you’d call perfect, but other than that it was one of the better US Open set-ups that I’ve seen. Level par was always looking like it would be a great score and that’s how it turned out. Tiniest of margins
I played some great golf to get myself right at the top of the leaderboard on the last day. I had some chances coming down the stretch, but I wasn’t able to convert. I guess a handful of other players could say the same thing. That’s Major Championship golf. It’s always won or lost by the tiniest of margins. I was disappointed, because any time you have a chance to win a Major and don’t win it, it’s obviously a huge letdown.
But after the dust had settled I could reflect on a lot of positives that week at Pebble. I hit the ball very nicely for pretty much the whole tournament and felt comfortable right there in the mix on Sunday afternoon.
I didn’t play great in my next two tournaments, the BMW International Open and The Barclays Scottish Open, but going into St. Andrews for the Open Championship I was really excited. I felt like I had prepared well and physically I felt really good. And I know the Old Course better than probably any other golf course we play on Tour. I also know this golf course can throw some serious surprises at you and the conditions that we had to play in on Friday afternoon were about as tough as they come. That’s the luck of the Open draw, I guess.
It’s funny, because in Thursday’s first round I don’t think I’d ever seen the Old Course so benign. There wasn’t a breath of wind and being out early it was one of those days where a low score was there for the taking. I think I was almost too aggressive and went chasing some pins and when you do that on this golf course it’s easy to catch the wrong side of a few slopes and make life quite tricky on and around the greens.
But it was a nice clean card at the end of the day, three birdies and no bogeys. Really, 69 could never be described as a bad start to The Open.
When I set off on my second round on Friday afternoon, though, I think it’s probably the strongest wind I’ve ever had to play in. After we’d played a couple of holes, the R&A pulled us off the course for an hour, because it was pretty much unplayable. Balls were literally blowing around on the greens. To be honest, when we went back out there it didn’t seem to me that the wind had dropped all that much and it blew hard for the rest of the day, basically.
It was all about survival and just trying to make pars. I pride myself on my ability to play in tough conditions, but this was pretty extreme. It was so tough getting the ball in the hole and shots just kept slipping through my fingers.
I was bitterly disappointed to miss the cut, but what can you do? It was just a very, very difficult day. But my cloud on Friday had a silver lining with Louis’ win on Sunday and right now you’d be hard pushed to find someone who is more proud than me this month. |
