A fabulous year for golf
THE biggest golf story of the year was, alas, the saddest one. But trust Jack Nicklaus, the greatest golfer of all, to come up with the words that spoke for his sport. “Arnold Palmer died, but that was some year, wasn’t it?” Never mind the 12 days of Christmas … by way of a farewell column for this year, here are my 12 days of golf that made this a fabulous season.
Sunday at the Olympics
A MONTH earlier there had been only acrimony and now we had what can only be described as pure gold. How perfect that the two poster boys for golf ’s return to the Games should slug it out, with Justin Rose edging it for Britain over Henrik Stenson from Sweden. The shoot-out attracted the biggest television audience ever in Britain and Sweden for a golf event.
Sunday at the Ryder Cup
IT MIGHT not have gone down to the wire like all the best editions, but it was still spellbinding. At the heart of the final day’s singles were Phil Mickelson and Sergio Garcia’s hell-bent attempt to birdie every hole, while the first nine holes of Rory McIlroy against Patrick Reed was as good as golf gets.
Sunday at the Masters
FORGET the fact that it went pear-shaped for Danny Willett at the Ryder Cup; pear-shaped for most of the summer, in fact. The Yorkshireman will always have Augusta and that’s worth a bad six months for any golfer. The story of the man who celebrated the birth of his first child one week and turned up and won a Green Jacket the next is one of those that explains why we love sport.
Sunday at the Open
A RUN of curious winners of the Claret Jug at Royal Troon came to an emphatic end following an almighty shootout between Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson. It spoke of the quality that Stenson had to come up with perhaps the finest round in Open history to see off the American and finally get his hands on a Major.
Saturday at the Ryder Cup
A STUNNING second day of unrelenting drama, as Sergio Garcia and Rafa Cabrera-Bello evoked the spirt of Seve Ballesteros and José Maria Olazabal to join a raging Rory and his quiet sidekick Thomas Pieters to inspire a morning comeback.
Sunday at the US Open
WE ALL love a tale of redemption and adding to Dustin Johnson’s was the bout of lunacy he had to put up with on the final day when rules officials stepped in when not needed. Thankfully, Johnson had been through enough in his life not to lose his head, and closed out his maiden Major win with a classic six iron to the last.
Sunday at the US PGA
AMERICAN Jimmy Walker held off world No 1 Jason Day with a bogey-free round of 67. If you want to know how hard it is to win Majors these days, consider this: all four winners this year were first-timers and yet all four played nerveless, perfect golf down the stretch. No one seems to get handed these titles anymore.
Sunday at the Tour Championship
WE SHOULD have guessed that when Rory McIlroy finally got his hands on the FedEx Cup and its extravagant $10 million bonus by holing an eagle on the 16th on his way to overturning a three-shot deficit with three holes remaining in Atlanta. A birdie at 18, after a chip from a bunker, sealed his place in the play-off. The gutsy Ryan Moore took him to the fourth extra hole and even there he holed a 20ft putt for par, only for Rory to follow him in from similar length for a match-winning birdie.
Thursday at The Open
ONE DAY a golfer will shoot 62 in a Major but until then the gods are chortling mightily at keeping us all in suspense. Mickelson looked to have completed the perfect round but his 20ft birdie putt on 18 somehow missed by a hair’s breadth. It was the 26th round of 63 seen in Majors. “It’s heartbreaking,” said Mickelson, knowing at 46 his chances are now fast running out.
Sunday at the DP World Tour Championship
THEY say Matt Fitzpatrick doesn’t have the wow factor of some but he’s certainly come up with plenty of wow moments for a man just turned 22. A birdie-four down the last to beat compatriot Tyrrell Hatton, claim £1.3m and become the youngest Englishman to win three times on tour? That’s wow enough for me.
Sunday at the Irish Open
FOR A pretty quiet year by his own standards, Rory still created plenty of highlight-reel moments to remember. Here he delivered at the K Club, with two of the shots of the year in the space of a half-hour on the 16th and 18th to turn a onestroke deficit into a three-shot lead and win on home soil for the first time.
Sunday at the Hero World Challenge
THE event was meaningless, but there was no disguising the excitement at the sight of arguably the greatest sportsman of the past quarter-century clad in a red polo shirt once more. Tiger Woods looked healthy and played enough good golf to leave us eager to see what 2017 has in store. – Daily Mail BATTLE ROYALE: Phil Mickelson, right, congratulates Henrik Stenson after the Swede won the Open Golf Championship at Royal Troon in Scotland in July. WAYDE van Niekerk slept in his own home for the first time this week.
Having recently bought his dream house in Bloemfontein, the Olympic champion finally found the time to move in and make it his own. These are busy times for South Africa’s outstanding sportsman of 2016.
The athletics superstar now ranks among sporting royalty, comfortably alongside eminent figures like Usain Bolt, Steph Curry and Serena Williams.
That’s what happens when you obliterate a long-standing world record held by Michael Johnson, causing the great man himself to exclaim, “That was a massacre. This young man has done something truly special.”
Bolt was the sentimental choice of voters who recently chose him as world athlete of the year, but Van Niekerk’s majestic Olympic 400m run was the moment of 2016. For South Africans who arose at around 2am to watch the spectacle from Rio, it was impossible to go back to sleep, the race instantly becoming one of those where-were-you-when questions.
Lest you forget, earlier this year, Van Niekerk also became the first man to achieve the sub-10 100m, sub-20 200m and sub-44 400m triple, a singular achievement that places him in the pantheon.
As the marketers are fond of saying, he’s “box office”, a can’t-miss star who has sponsors and corporates lined up.
“It’s been total mayhem and chaos,” says his agent Peet van Zyl, who compares the bedlam to when Oscar Pistorius was such hot property. Van Zyl looked after the disgraced athlete’s interests too.
Van Niekerk has had to walk a tightrope between maintaining his fitness and training as an athlete with the understandable demands of corporates and assorted hangers-on who all want a piece of him. He was in Monte Carlo for the IAAF awards the other day; the phone doesn’t stop for such requests.
It’s seldom easy. He returned to serious training in early November and his coach, Tannie Ans Botha, made it clear that fitness came first. She understands that he is being pulled in all directions, but isn’t shy to raise an eyebrow when the fuss interferes with his training.
The Olympic champion has had to quickly learn about making pleasantries and glad-handing. He’s naturally shy and introverted, and by all accounts, his remarkable success hasn’t gone to his head.
“Sir, you know me,” he tells Van Zyl, “I’d much rather run for money than talk for it.”
His agent attributes this modesty to both his humble upbringing and his place in the “bubble of Bloemfontein” that protects him.
What Van Niekerk doesn’t want to be is a one-hit wonder who quietly drifts away. He might have climbed Everest in an Olympic sense, but his goals remain stellar. One of them is to defend his world 400m title at the World Championship in London next year.
London will also mark the final curtain for Bolt, a big fan of Van Niekerk, and may well symbolise a passing of the baton; the poster child of athletics anointing his successor, who is just 24.
Going sub-43 for the 400m may seem other-worldly, but Johnson himself believes Van Niekerk could do it. Running more 200m races could be a means to getting there and Van Niekerk is dead keen to do so.
His 19.94 best is freakishly quick and presumably, Frankie Fredericks’s Africa record (19.68) is an early target.
Unfortunately, the schedule at the worlds won’t allow him to double up for the 400m and 200m, but he might have a crack at the SA championship in April.
He and teammate Akani Simbine, the Olympic 100m finalist, joke about taking one another on in the 200m, an intriguing prospect that would surely pack in the crowds.
But it might not happen if Athletics SA, not the most progressive bunch around, don’t shift the date of nationals as they clash with the IAAF World Relays that take place in the Bahamas. SA could put together a potent team for the 4x100m, with Van Niekerk part of the mix.
The point is that Van Niekerk wants to run in South Africa. And South Africans would clamour to watch him.
We should all salute our splendid, sensational hero. He’s pure gold in every sense.