Sport has a way of putting egg on your face

Dear Manchester United fans

That was the ultimate letdown, wasn’t it? I mean, it’s bad enough that your “noisy neighbours”, as Sir Alex once referred to them, have won the English Premier League, but for you to hand it to them on a plate with a home defeat to, of all teams, West Brom. Now that must rankle!

It just shows what a great leveller sport is and it reminded me of a day many years ago when I had an evening assignment and a morning off. I was a single-figure handicap golfer and decided to utilise my spare time with nine holes at Randpark Golf Club.

A colleague of mine who worked with me at The Star also had a few hours to kill and agreed to join me, so she and I went off to play nine holes on what was then known as the Windsor course.

My game reflected what was a perfect autumn morning. I barely put a foot wrong, carding two birdies and two bogeys to finish the nine holes on level-par 36. It is the first – and last – time I have ever shot anything close to level par and I was convinced I had finally mastered the game that had caused me so much angst.

A couple of days later, I met up with another media colleague, Pieter Oosthuizen from Beeld, for our weekly match against Ken Rutherford, the New Zealander who was captaining the Transvaal

Guy Hawthorne

(as they were then called) cricket team, and former Proteas off-spinner Clive Eksteen. The regular media versus players clashes had not gone our way (mainly because Rutherford got his handicap in a lucky packet) but I was confident our day had arrived to put one over them.

I told Pieter about my nine holes earlier in the week and we set off for the first tee believing the players were about to be on the receiving end of a hiding.

How wrong we were. I hit my tee shot on the first out of bounds and took a messy six on the opening par four. I parred the parthree second but lost my ball on the third, blacking out on the stroke one par-four.

From there it was all downhill and I limped home with a 94 – 22 over par – as Rutherford and Eksteen romped to one of their easiest wins in months.

I remember feeling on top of the world the morning of that match. I figured I was unbeatable after my nine holes at Windsor and couldn’t understand how the game had been so difficult until I posted that score. I was confident – no, cocky – going into the match with the players. And I’m convinced that was the problem.

One of my current colleagues, shortly before the kick-off of the United-West Brown match, was convinced Jose Mourinho’s side were going to whack Albion. “Come on,” he said. “There’s no way United are going to lose to them!”

And I reckon United’s players probably went into the match with a similar attitude, much like the one I carried into the match all those years ago against Rutherford and Eksteen.

The lesson is: don’t take anything for granted. Sport has a funny way of bringing people down to earth with a bang.