Politics kills (21-06-07)

SPAN>

HARARE

THE political situation in Zimbabwe has led to the cancellation of the country’s first international golf championship in years, the Dale Hayes Super Golf Challenge, after South African golfers pulled out citing security reasons.

The country last hosted an international golf championship, the Zimbabwe Open, in 2000. But the championship, which attracted the world’s best golfers like Nick Price, was put on the backburner by the Zimbabwe Professional Golfers Association due to a serious foreign currency crisis gripping the country. The professionals are paid prize money in hard currency.

The latest setback for Zimbabwe‘s embattled sports fraternity came this week, when the Dale Hayes event, scheduled for 8 June to 12 June at Elephant Hills, Victoria Falls, was cancelled.

The resort town had been scheduled to host probably its first international golfing event but the country is the midst of a crisis characterised by galloping inflation, blackouts and fuel shortages.

Roger Baylis, the president of the Zimbabwe Junior Golfers Association, confirmed that the Dale Hayes Super Golf Challenge had been called off.

“Most South African golfers are afraid to come here,” Baylis said.

Shirley Njolomole, director of Sunset Tours who were selling the ‘golf and holiday’ package, confirmed that the Challenge had been cancelled because of “the poor numbers”.

“The numbers were just not coming. We sold the idea to the golf clubs and associations in the country and South Africa but the numbers were just too low to go ahead with the golf tournament. Dale Hayes was also supposed to be coming,” Njolomole said.

A golf association executive said that the championship has been cancelled because the South Africa golfers were not happy with the political situation in the country and feared for their security. Another executive said the “country was burning” and not even a sack of money could bring the South African golfers here.

Hayes – who presents Super Golf, a golf magazine programme on SuperSport which began in August 2004 – was set to grace the tournament. The former European Tour golfer is also involved with The Compleat Golfer magazine and co-ordinates golf days and events and conducts fun golf clinics for corporate golf days.

He is a director of Matkovich & Hayes Golf Course Architects and a member of the golf commentary team for the Golf Channel (USA) – international feed of the European Tour and SuperSport. Dale is an Honorary Member of South African Professional Golfers Association.

With such a high profile and legion of South African golfers said to be coming, the spotlight was set to be on Zimbabwe this week. Now, sadly it is not.