Oh the joy of becoming an SA Open champion and shutting up my dad!

I WAS born into golf.

My father, Otway, was the Club professional at Zwartkop Country Club for 56 years, which we believe is a world record. But he was also a fine player, who was in the very first Springbok golf team that travelled to Britain in 1937. His teammates were the great Bobby Locke, Frank Agg and Clarence Olander. In 1939 he won the SA Amateur and in 1953 he lost in a play-off for the SA Open.

My oldest brother John also played for South Africa in the Eisenhower Trophy and he also won the SA amateur plus he was a runner-up in the SA Open. Bottom line, I had two strong acts to follow.

Before turning pro I never won the SA Amateur and boy did I get some stick for that for years after. All I ever heard from both my father and brother was that matchplay was proper golf – anybody could win a strokeplay tournament – which was because I was a two-time SA Strokeplay Amateur Champion. Their other stock reply was that they never had a strokeplay event in their day and that it was only started for those people who couldn’t win the real SA Amateur.

You can imagine then, how badly I wanted to win the SA Open Championship. In the first five years that I’d played in the SA Open as a professional, my best finish was fifth, which wasn’t great, and when I got to Houghton Golf Club for the 1976 SA Open and saw how they had prepared the golf course, my confidence dwindled even more.

The rough was knee high, so accuracy off the tee was critical and that wasn’t the strongest part of my game. In the few practice rounds I had I worked out a way of getting around the course using a 1-iron off the tee on nine of the long holes. I spent hours on the practice tee for the three days prior to the first round practising my 1-iron tee shot off a peg.

Needless to say, it worked. The only fairway I missed with that club was at the 10th hole, where my shot ran through the side of the bunker onto a small ditch that the greenkeeper had dug to allow water to run out of the bunker. My ball ended up in this furrow, which was only just wide enough for a golf ball.

I was positive that I would get a free drop and my playing partner agreed, however, there was a rules official who disagreed, so I asked for a second opinion. In the meantime I played two balls and made a four with one and a five with the other. About four holes later I got a message to say that I was not entitled to a free drop so the five would count. I was livid. After the game I refused to go to the media room and Dan Retief has never allowed me to forget it.

To make it worse, Brian Henning, who ran the Sunshine Tour in those days, but didn’t run the SA Open, told me that they had gotten the ruling totally wrong. Then Brian added; ” Dale go out and win the thing. That one shot is not the end of the world.” He said the right thing at the right time. I became so focused on winning – I’ve never felt that before or after.

I need to thank both Brian Henning and my trusty, rusty old 1-iron (which I still have), for that win. It is in the golf shop at Zwartkop with the rest of the iron set that I used for eight of my ten years as a pro golfer.

Each year a few people still come up to me and mention that they watched me win the SA Open with just irons. Not altogether true, but its nice that they remember.

I eventually won that SA Open after an 18-hole play-off against John Fourie and again

it was the 1-iron that I have to thank. I was hitting that 1-iron past his driver and on the 7th hole, a par 5, I hit two 1-irons onto the green and John didn’t reach with two woods.

I was in two play-offs with John and also two with Hugh

Baiocchi, two of my oldest and best friends. I won one and lost one to each of them but thankfully I won the most important one, the SA Open Championship and was once and for all able to shut both my brother and father up.

Many people believe that Glendower is the best inland golf course in South Africa. I would certainly put it alongside Sun City and Leopard Creek as one of the Top three.

The first tournament that was played there was the Transvaal Open in 1939 and the winner was Bobby Locke. He won the SA Open ten times.

At Glendower in 1939 it was his scores that stood out. He broke every scoring record in the South African history books and his record stood for many years. The par at Glendower in those days was 75 and the length of the golf course was a touch over 7000 yards. Extremely long in 1939 with the equipment golfers were using. His total of 265 was an amazing 35-under par. When you consider that the PGA Tour scoring record is 26-under par, achieved by Tommy Armour III in the 2003 Texas Open, Locke’s achievement was quite simply amazing.

Glendower has gotten longer since Locke’s day and is also narrower and more penal. With all the rain that the Gauteng area has had, the rough needs to be avoided.

Players will often not be able to reach the green with their approach shots if they find the rough.