Thrashen said:
JReb1 said:
WOW, I just read that Louis is the son of a SA farmer who was only able to afford to play golf through the Ernie Els foundation which paid for his travel and equipment expenses.
The son of a white South African farmer? What a delightful coincidence. Almost too perfect to actually be real-life events.
"Thanks for conceiving this magnificent nation in which my family may be brutally tortured, viciously raped, and ruthlessly slaughtered at any given moment, Mr. Mandela!"Â
At least Tiger Woods is too egotistical to concern himself with anything accept his own insatiable gratification.
Last week's Open was more about symbols than anything else: the
white South African golfer and the black South African caddie
marching across Swilcan Bridge side by side. Summer 2010 has been a
coming out party for the new South Africa. When the final putt was
holed, Rasego, who counseled Oosthuizen on most of the 272 shots he
played, reached out to give his boss an old-school handshake. Shrek
(the golfer's nickname, courtesy of the gap between his front teeth)
turned it into a hug. The caddie, who has known poverty and apartheid,
wasn't fully ready for it.
Oosthuizen is full of surprises. In sporting terms, the biggest of
them was that a golfer who had previously played in only eight majors,
missing the cut in seven of them, could not only win in his ninth
major start but also blow away the field.
And as soon as he was done, there was another surprise. In his
acceptance speech, at the top of the thank-yous, before he mentioned
his parents and his wife (Nel-Mare) and the fans, he gave a shout-out
to Nelson Mandela, the former president who has devoted his life to
ending apartheid in South Africa. Mandela's 92nd birthday fell on
British Open Sunday.
"Louis is not a political person," Rasego said later. "I felt my spine running."
The champion golfer of the year (the title is courtesy of the Royal
and Ancient Golf Club) grew up in the rural southern South African
town of Albertinia, where his father, Piet, has a dairy farm with
110 head. Piet was a good tennis player and so was Louis. But Louis,
doing his own thing, found his way to the local nine-holer, with its
sand-and-oil greens. If you want to groove a perfect stroke, learn to
putt on sand greens. They're slow (as are the greens at St. Andrews)
but absolutely true.
"Louis was not very keen for milking, but he did like driving the
tractors," Piet said on Sunday. It was late afternoon, the cows were
grazing, and Piet and his wife, Minnie, watched on TV as their son
played in the British Open with a heady lead. Piet sounded like the
picture of Afrikaner calm.
He was asked, "Are you glad Louis chose golf over tennis?"
"Up to now," the father said, "it has been good."
Another Afrikaner golfer, Ernie Els, who won the 2002 British Open,
had an early interest in tennis. Were it not for the Ernie Els
Foundation, which supports promising junior golfers in South Africa,
Louis Oosthuizen might have learned to like milking a cow. He would
have had to do something to make a living. He was done with school at
18. Louis thanks the Big Easy at every turn, in word and deed.
Oosthuizen has started a junior golf academy at his home club in South
Africa.
Read more:
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http://www.golf.com/golf/tours_news/article/0,28136,2005221,00.html
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