A First Tournament Visit To Joburg & Meet A South African Cricketing Great.

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This week’s Joburg Open being played at the Houghton Club is yet another tournament that brings back fond memories.

It was two weeks into 2000 and my first time in South Africa.

A fortnight earlier I had stood in darkness, apart from the lights of one or two motor vehicles, on the first tee of the Tonga Golf Club and at the stroke of midnight I hit the first shot on a golf course in the new Millennium.

A fortnight later I made my way from the eastern Pacific Ocean shoreline in Australia west across the island continent and also the width of the Indian Ocean to the South African capital of Johannesburg.

During the course of reporting on the inaugural Alfred Dunhill Championship I joined colleague and good friend Graham ‘Otters’ Otway playing the Centurion Golf Club and my first-ever game of golf in the Rainbow Nation.

The Centurion club was about a 40 klm drive north of Houghton and to the north of Joburg.

While it was my maiden visit, ‘Otters’ had been to Joburg a couple of times reporting on the efforts of the England Cricket team and he was in Joburg in January 2002 covering both the Alfred Dunhill Championship and also the fifth and final England-v-South Africa test match at the SuperSport Stadium that backs onto the Centurion Golf Club.

The Centurion Club course was designed by Peter Matkovich and has only been opened for play three years earlier in 1997.

No sooner had we walked into the clubhouse post our round of golf and ‘Otters’ spotted South African cricketing legend Graham Pollock.

Pollock was 55-years old at the time and a few months earlier he had been voted in 1999 as South Africa’s Cricketer of the 20th Century and this achievement on the back of an international career being cut short at the age of 26 by the sporting boycott of South Africa, and all but one of his 23 Test matches being against England and Australia, the leading cricket nations of the day, he broke a number of records.

Though the record that most counted was Pollock’s career Test match batting average (twenty innings minimum) of 60.97 and in 2000 it was the cricketing world’s second best behind Aussie legend Sir Don ‘The Don’ Bradman.

‘Otters’ approached Pollock who happily agreed to a photograph.  Oh, I have looked and looked for that photograph with Pollock but where it is, still has me searching.

It was another proud moment in my life meeting Pollock given Bradman was tops when it came to cricket, retiring as he did with a remarkable batting average of 99.94 and considered by some to be the greatest achievement by any sportsman in any major sport.

If only ‘The Don’ had scored just four runs in his last innings, it would have been 100. A story developed over the years that claimed Bradman missed the ball because of tears in his eyes, a claim Bradman denied for the rest of his life.

Though it would be one year and one week after meeting Pollock that Bradman passed away aged 92, falling short by eight years in making the ‘ton’.

England’s Anthony Wall emerged a surprise winner of the inaugural Alfred Dunhill Championship securing victory by two shots and in a field that featured Retief Goosen, Bernhard Langer and Ian Woosnam.

Rain has reduced to the tournament by 54-holes and Wall, who was being coached by his taxi-cab driving father, posting a third round 68.

Wall’s win led to headlines in some newspaper:  “Son of Taxi Cab Driver Captures Inaugural Alfred Dunhill Championship”.

It would take the now SKY Sports Golf commentator more than 16-years in mid-2016 to win a second and only other Tour victory.



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