Another Major milestone for SA’s ‘Big Easy’
ERNIE Els will reach yet another major milestone in his career when he makes his 30th Open Championship appearance at Royal St George’s this week.
It’s a journey that began in 1989 when Els made his Open debut at Royal Troon after winning the SA Amateur title that year, and missed the cut with rounds of 72 and 76.
And it’s a journey that saw him twice win the Claret Jug, in 2002 and 2012, and finish second in 1996, 2000 and 2004.
Since that first appearance in 1989, he has only twice missed the Open, and that was in 1990 and 1991 (there was no tournament in 2020).
This week, Els will lead a group of 13 South Africans challenging for major glory on the English links, including Jaco Ahlers, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Dean Burmester, Dylan Frittelli, Branden Grace, Justin Harding, Garrick Higgo, Shaun Norris, Louis
Oosthuizen, JC Ritchie, Erik van Rooyen and Daniel van Tonder. Louis de Jager has had to withdraw after contracting Covid-19.
It seems only apt that the man who has flown the flag for South African golf around the world for decades now, and who is the country’s last major champion after winning the 2012 Open at Royal Lytham and St Annes, should lead such a strong group of South Africans in golf’s oldest and perhaps most celebrated major.
And it brings him back to a style of the game which he has always loved, from the minute he first set foot on the links in 1987 as a member of a touring South African amateur team.
“I don’t know if you’re born with it or you learn it. All I know is that I took to it like a duck to water. Links golf is the foundation of the game, and I just think I had a good feel for it from the start,” he says.
Els has gone as far as to say that links golf brings something totally different out of him, even to the point of feeling like he hits the ball more solidly, and that his legendary languid swing even feels different on the links.
“I love hitting low three irons, and so on. Even with today’s equipment, if the weather is bad on a links course, that’s a true leveller.”
His love of the links has certainly showed in his Open appearances.
After that missed cut in 1989, he returned in 1992 to finish tied fifth at Muirfield, and then tied sixth the following year at Royal St George’s.
Els has described his fifth place in the 1992 Open as the door that opened for the incredible career he would go on to have.
It is hardly surprising that the Open is Els’s most successful major, with 13 top 10s, nine of them being top-five finishes.