OPINION: Golf winnings shall not fall easy like manna from heaven

[PHOTO: COURTESY]

The 2019 Kenya Open Golf Championship is on next month; from 14th to 18th March 2018, at Karen Country Club. This time around rebranded and up-funded into a European Tour Event. For the first time ever, the Kenya Open shall be broadcasted live to TV viewer all over the world.

While last year’s winner, Italian Lorenzo Gagli, took home the first prize of 80,000 euros (KSH 10 million), this year, the top prize is upwards of KSH 20 million.

KSH 20 million is a tidy sum for any Kenyan Pro who gets to win the Kenya Open. The reality however, is that so far, none appears to stand a chance of winning it. With 2000 Race-to-Dubai points also up for grabs, we expect some of the best European Tour golfers to show up.

Before you get the long knives out and attack this writer for being unpatriotic and unsupportive to these “experienced’ Pros, hear me out first. Last year on this column, I wrote an article published as, “Kenyan golfers a million courses away from winning the Kenya Open”. Go ahead, google it and read it first. Has anything changed?

In December last year, I run into one of our former top Kenyan Golf Pros in Nairobi, and in the course of inquiring whether he had finally been inducted into the KGU Hall of Fame for his performance at the Kenya Open in the late 1990s, a recognition I have personally been advocating for, he told me that he was looking for a sponsor to enable him to go and start playing on the US PGA Senior Tour now that he has reached the age of 50 years.

I was like, what? A rat’s breath could have knocked me down. Was he just trying to impress me, of all people? Or was he just plain cluelessness? Since when did attaining age 50 become the qualifier for joining the US PGA Senior Tour? It can’t be and it isn’t that simple.

I bit of research later, unearthed a bunch of YouTube videos in which another of our famed “long-hitting” local Pro was claiming exactly the same thing: he was looking for a sponsor to enable him to go and join the US PGA Senior Tour. Houston, we have a problem. If this is how our Pros think, they badly need to wake up!

The US Senior PGA Tour, also known as the Champions Tour is effectively the retirement tour for former PGA Tour players. Now advanced in age, they are not as strong and their bodies are less resilient. Instead of four rounds, Senior Tours competitions comprise of three rounds. The courses are set shorter, not as tough and not as long. But playing on this tour still requires top golfing skills and knowledge. Competition is still fierce among these old guards.

Just like any other golf Tour, one still has to qualify to join for a Senior Tour. Unfortunately, none of our active older generation Kenya golf Pros has ever won any notable regional golf championship in Africa or Asia, so automatic acceptance is out of question. Their best recent wins were the minor Rwanda and Tanzania Opens, which for purposes of comparison, have also been won by Tanzanian Amateur Victor Joseph recently.

Yes, Victor Joseph. That phenomenal amateur kid who qualified for the Kenya Open last year by beating our overconfident Pros at the Muthaiga Open, on their home ground. Calling Sportspesa! This is the one young East African golfer you should be offering full sponsorship.

The notion that our aged Pros, most of whom have at most participated in one Challenge Tour event, the Kenya Open, think they are now in the league to compete against the likes of Bernhard Langer, John Daly, Vijay Singh, Fred Funk, and other former PGA Tour winners who have now hit age 50, with some who are playing on not just the Seniors Tour but also the regular PGA Tour, is insane and absolute BS.

Ernie Els, Retief Goosen and Mickelson all turn 50 next year. And these are the guys our Pros think they can now compete with and have a chance to beat? Not even when hippos learn to twerk! If our boys could not qualify to play against them when they were their 20s and 30s, what makes them think they can challenge them at 50s? Sheer delusion.

Such thoughts and careless statements reveal the naiveté of our older golf Pros. It lays bare the fact that they actually do not understand where they stand in the world of Professional golf. We know what standards are required to qualify for the world golf tours, and I can tell them they are nowhere near there.

This reminds me how a former PGK Chairman displayed the same arrogant attitude, thinking his game was up there, dissed golfing in Africa headed to European Tour Q-School with lofty dreams of easily joining the European Senior Tour. He saw dust, came back running, tail between his legs and gave up golf.

I sense some sour grapes brewing against the younger gym-hitting flat bellies, the Snows, Nduvas, Mundanyis and Charanias, in an attempt to demean and deride their rising careers. These flatbellies have the right idea and are walking the walk: from religiously working out at the gym for body strength, studying the game, running cross country for fitness, practically living at the range, and anything else to gain skills and experience and even joining the South African based Sunshine Tour. If only they had more sponsors.

Golf is a complex game. It takes years to get proficient. One needs to start at an early age and get proper training and schooling for at least 15 years. Talent alone is not enough.

Note the word schooling. Data and facts indicate that young golfers who attend USA Universities and get golf training and instruction, tend to do better and eventually join the golf Tours. Of note are Molinari and Immelman, who have both won the Kenya Open.

Unfortunately, we do not have any qualified PGA trained teaching Pros in Kenya: just a bunch of former caddies who have learnt the game by sight and feel. They “turn Pro” to secure employment as Club Professionals and to make a livelihood from teaching golf to beginners, which nobody should begrudge them. Sure, they can teach beginners, but certainly not advanced golfers.

Getting good at golf is one thing. Joining the Tour is a different issue. For really good golfers who don’t have the college route option, the quickest route to the tour, is to attend Q-School, a rigorous week of rigorous, merciless golf competitions. To qualify for Q-School, your handicap needs to be in the scratch handicaps zip code. Just declaring yourself Pro will not be accepted.

Q-School is not cheap. In 2013, those accepted for US PGA Q-School and had to go to the two-stage pre-qualifying, then through the five-stage Q-School rounds spent approximately to KSH1.5million in entry fees alone. Travel costs to the US, internal flights and taxi to host venues, hotel and food not included.

Money issues aside, the Q-School is not exactly friendly. For the European Tour, the qualifying stage venues will usually be some windy, sandy, grassless links course, and held in the cold of autumn. Our golfers, have no idea how to dress for cold weather golf without the full swing being restricted. They also may see not realize the importance and necessity for all-weather gloves, waterproof suits, waterproof shoes and hats until it is too late.

Few know how to consistently play low, penetrating knockdown shots that keep the ball under the howling winds and still get driver-like distances. Some don’t even have the equipment for that anyway: just ask around how many carry a 2-iron.

Only two dozen or so top finalists out of the hundreds of the best golfers in Europe, Asia and Africa get to join the European tour every year through Q School. The usual but longer path into the main golf tours is qualify and join the various mini tours that serve as stepping stones to the main tours.

These include the Challenge Tour, Web.com Tour, Staysure Tour and the Futures Tour. After a whole year of competitions, the top 15 money earners on these minor tours are promoted into the main Tour. If a golfer joins but fails to win enough money on Tour that following year, he loses his card.

With their meager cash prizes, surviving on these mini-tour requires extreme discipline and frugality. The golfer will need to set up a home somewhere abroad, which means rent, electricity, water, and heating gas to pay. Add living costs for food, drinks, health insurances, medications, communication, gym, laundry, clothing and others.

Competitions are held all over the USA, or European on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. This means costs for air tickets, airport taxis, hotel accommodation, food, new golf balls and caddy fees.

Hats off to Zambia’s Madalitso Muthiya. He has qualified for the US Nationwide and Buy.com Tours, Canadian Tour and Sunshine Tours and won once on the Sunshine Tour in 2006 he came through qualifying to become the first Zambian and black African to play in the U.S. Open.

Muthiya is relentless and does not give up. Last year, he narrowly missed qualifying for the Asian Tour having placed top positions in all qualifying rounds except the final.

There are another two slim windows for joining the golf Tours. One is a Sponsor’s Exemption awarded to a very confident golfer who gets invited to a Tour competition as a guest of a sponsor, then wins enough money to qualify for that tour. That is the route Tiger Woods and Michelle Wie took.

The other option is Monday Qualifying. This is a Competition held on the Monday of the week of a Tour competition. They lump all top golfer who had not qualified by then, to fight for the remaining two or three slots. That is how Richard Ainley from Nakuru made history as the first Kenyan to qualify for a PGA Tour event by qualifying for the Buick Open in 2002. Even Tiger noticed our south-pawed Ritchie and said hello at the range.

The Kenya Open held their first ever Monday Qualifier last year, at the Vetlab Golf Course, at the urging of Yours Sincerely. Frenchman Victor Riu emerged the outright winner and  eventually scored the eighth position in the Kenya Open days later, proving the legitimacy of a Monday Qualifier. Hopefully this eponymously named “Kibunja Classic” Monday Qualifier shall be held every year at the European Tour Kenya Open.

One can therefore appreciate that making it into any Tour is no mean feat, thus trivializing the challenge of qualifying for the US Champions Tour, is irritating and absolute hogwash. Such simplistic, pompous, braggadocious attitude by Pros who have never participated in, let alone won anything tangible on the minor tours is despicable.

Such lies can only serve to wow and impress the ignoramus around us. Our two clueless aged Pros need to respect and stand in awe of those who have succeeded or are likely to succeed where they attempted and failed. It’s like they are searching for an opportunity to run away.

Wake up guys; golf wins are not going to rain on you like manna from heaven. Instead of being wet blankets, bestow some of your experience on the upcoming young blood. Otherwise, shut up and stop lying about joining the PGA Tours.    

All is not lost, though since you can still enjoy the low-hanging fruit of the local Safari circuit. And there some prize money for making the cut at the Kenya Open. Good luck. As for Mundanyi, Andersen, Nduva and Snow, may the golf gods grant you all the good breaks, keep it in the short grass and stick them close to the pin.