OPINION: Sun City to host LIV Golf in future — why not?

Was it just me, or was something missing from the Nedbank Golf Challenge this year?

I didn’t get to Sun City to watch the 40^th edition of the “Million Dollar” and maybe if I had been there, walking the grounds of the Gary Player Country Club, I’d feel differently.

Special and unique

For me the select-field of old, when just 12 or 20 golfers teed it up, was still the best. There were always great players in the field, and with the tournament in early December, it was something special and unique.

I understand the reasons for getting the tournament onto the DP World Tour (European Tour), but while we had some good golfers out here last week and enjoyed an exciting conclusion, only winner Tommy Fleetwood, at 23, and runner-up Ryan Fox, at 26, were top-50 golfers in the world rankings going into the event.

‘Million Dollar’ days

For the NGC to get its spark back and to be a truly spectacular, unmissable event, where people diarise the dates early in the year already, more of the world’s best golfers have to come to South Africa — as they did in the days of the “Million Dollar”.

If that is not possible, for whatever reason, one’s got to wonder if the organisers of the NGC would consider exploring the option of it becoming, horror of all horrors, an LIV Golf Tour event.

I have heard some golf fans make suggestions of this nature and while it may upset many involved in the tournament and associated with golf in South Africa, it is not such a far-fetched idea.

Imagine the likes of Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Paul Casey, Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and South Africans Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel, together with Branden Grace and a few others, at the event.

With all the big money at stake and Sun City what it is, it almost seems like a match made in heaven.

Adelaide’s Grange Golf Club will host Australia’s first LIV event in April next year; Africa too will surely eventually get a look-in, and if it’s South Africa, there’s really only one place to take it.