How Gary Player benefitted from apartheid

[Langalibalele]

Apartheid's forgotten victim



Papwa Sewgolum, an illiterate native of Durban, may have been the best golfer his country ever produced. But South Africa's apartheid government made sure he couldn't compete.

James Bagnall, The Ottawa Citizen
Published:*Saturday, November 15, 2008

DURBAN, South Africa- On the eve of his first major golf victory last April, Trevor Immelman listened intently to an unexpected voicemail. It gave him goosebumps. His fellow countryman, hero and golf legend Gary Player, now 73, had called to exhort Mr. Immelman to believe in himself.
Mr. Immelman, 28, has a treasured photograph of himself as a child atop Mr. Player's shoulders. As he played the fourth round of the Masters tournament in Augusta, Georgia, Mr. Immelman replayed his mentor's words at key moments. He steadied himself enough to win by three strokes over Tiger Woods, becoming the first South African to win the Masters since 1978, when Mr. Player last managed the feat.
With the victory, Mr. Immelman joined Mr. Player, Retief Goosen, Ernie Els and Bobby Locke in an exclusive club. They are the only South Africans to have won a major.
Only Mr. Player among them has won all four of golf's major tournaments, which include the Masters, the British Open, the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship. Mr. Player's website declares that he is "the most successful international golfer of all time." But there is something extravagant about Mr. Player's self-promotion, and not just because U.S. stars such as Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus have won more majors.
His claim of supremacy outside the U.S. must also be qualified. Mr. Immelman, who was 14 the year apartheid ended, is too young to appreciate why.
During the prime of Mr. Player's career there was another South African who was his equal on the links, who defeated him in 1965 at a sensational provincial open championship in Durban and who won several European championships. Papwa Sewgolum was the great-grandson of an indentured labourer from India, an impoverished illiterate who possessed prodigious amounts of raw talent. Had he been permitted by the apartheid regime to play the game at the same level, with similar advantages as Mr. Player and other white golfers, there is no telling what he might have accomplished.
Mr. Sewgolum could have left his home in Durban's suburbs to play professional golf overseas, where racism was less overt. But he was a sweet, simple man who hated travelling. His life and career thus became portraits of the evil apartheid did. The regime crushed him bit by bit, in a myriad of ways. And it happened while Mr. Player golfed with prime minister Johannes Vorster, the symbol of everything apartheid represented.
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"I've got no bitterness toward Gary Player," says Rajen Sewgolum, one of five Sewgolum children, and the only one who took up golf. "I look at him and my father as two of South Africa's greatest golfers."
Rajen is the keeper of his father's flame. He participated three years ago in a one-hour documentary on Papwa's life and is working on a book aimed at righting the injustices done. Rajen is also helping out with a proposed movie -- two South Africa productions are currently underway.
Rajen, a part-time lecturer at the Durban University of Technology, recently won a bid to manage the Windsor Golf Course, just north of the city core. It needs a lot of work. The fairways are patchy and the clubhouse requires refurbishing. Five or six black caddies are hanging out by the first tee, waiting for their first job of the day.
The course is a few kilometres north of the Durban Country Club, the city's most prestigious golf club and scene of his father's greatest triumph and most bitter humiliation under apartheid.
Rajen has a 2 handicap, which means he shoots close to par. His son, Nisharlan, is better. Nisharlan is one of a small handful of non-white teaching professionals with accreditation from the Professional Golf Association. Nisharlan hopes soon to win his playing card, allowing him to compete in PGA events. But this is expensive business, one of the reasons the sport remains such an overwhelmingly white occupation.
Things were much tougher for Papwa. He lost his father, a city labourer, at age 10. To help out with the family finances, Papwa became a caddy in the late 1930s at the nearby Beachwood golf course, now part of the Durban Country Club.
See VICTORY on PAGE B2
Victory to humiliation,
with astonishing speed
Continued from page B1
He was not permitted to play because it was a whites-only club. Long before the Afrikaner-dominated National Party won power in 1948 and implemented apartheid, racism was already well entrenched. Indians and blacks were often limited to their own, poorly maintained courses. Occasionally they could play the better courses, when whites weren't there.
Nevertheless, Mr. Sewgolum became renowned for his skill around the green, the key to scoring low. His accuracy from 100 metres or less was remarkable, allowing him often to score in the 60s, well below par, when he was a teenager.
He acquired his skills in a very unusual way. Before he became a caddy, his mother sent him out regularly to search for fruit in the nearby bushes. Over the years, Mr. Sewgolum collected a few golf balls and clubs, tossed by frustrated white players from the adjoining course. At dawn, he would practice hitting. The straighter his shots, the less time he would have to spend looking for stray balls.
Because he taught himself, he had no idea that he gripped the club in a completely unorthodox fashion, by putting his left hand below the right. For a right-handed player, the physics of this arrangement demands a very peculiar swing. In order to get sufficient speed on the club head by the time it hits the ball, Mr. Sewgolum would have to swivel his hips much earlier during his downswing.
The impression he created was one of immense extra effort, in sharp contrast to the smooth, ballet-like movements of the best golfers using a conventional grip.
But no matter how skilled he became, Mr. Sewgolum would go nowhere in his chosen sport without a white sponsor. He found one in Graham Wulff, the owner of a Durban chemical plant and member of Beachwood Golf Club.
Chris Nicholson, an author and High Court judge, describes the encounter in a 2005 biography, Papwa Sewgolum: From Pariah to Legend. One of Mr. Wulff's playing companions asked Mr. Sewgolum for advice about which club to use. When the shot fell short of the green, he berated the caddy and asked him to explain his club selection. Mr. Sewgolum accepted the proffered club, addressed a second ball, and struck it firmly to within four feet of the hole.
In subsequent rounds, Mr. Wulff asked the caddy master for Mr. Sewgolum. Whenever other members were out of sight, Mr. Wulff encouraged his caddy to play along. He was deeply impressed by Mr. Sewgolum's talent.
In 1956, Mr. Wulff hired Mr. Sewgolum, 28 at the time, to install bottle caps at his chemical factory, which manufactured his invention, Oil of Olay. He paid his protegé $40 per month, a respectable sum in those days, and gave him lots of time off to practice golf.
Mr. Wulff was keen to see Mr. Sewgolum compete against the best, but South Africa's Group Areas Act prohibited the mixing of races in sports.
There was another problem. He learned that even if he wanted to accompany Mr. Sewgolum to an overseas competition, the authorities wouldn't permit them to fly together commercially.
Mr. Wulff was tall and confident, easily recognizable with his thick moustache and good looks. He was also a decent man, frequently bothered by the racial inequities around him.
In 1959, he purchased a four-seat Piper Twin aircraft and flew Mr. Sewgolum privately to Britain so he could compete for a spot in the British Open. It was Mr. Sewgolum's first trip outside Durban. Mr. Wulff found, to his surpise, that he had to teach his caddy how to use cutlery and bathroom faucets and to wash his clothes. He also taught Mr. Sewgolum how to sign his own name.
At Britain's Muirfield course, Mr. Sewgolum played his first practice round against Mr. Player, shooting a 70 to Mr. Player's 78. But after qualifying for the tournament, Mr. Sewgolum shot a first-round 79, leaving him too much ground to make up. He missed the cut after the second day of play.
At the time, the performance was blamed on Mr. Sewgolum's unfamiliarity with travel, not to mention homesickness. But the first-day jitters may have had another cause: it's known that Mr. Sewgolum was interviewed at length prior to tee off at a British Open by South Africa's secret police. But whether it was the 1959 contest or a subsequent Open is unclear.
Mr. Player, 23, won the tournament, his first major. He had been playing golf for only seven or eight years, but everyone was astonished at how quickly he took to the game. His father, Harry, a mining manager, enrolled him as a member at the Virginia Park golf course near Johannesburg. Within 16 months, his son was shooting par.
Unlike Mr. Sewgolum, Mr. Player could play in white tournaments for decent stakes. A second-place finish in a 1955 tournament gave him enough money to buy a car. Later, when Mr. Player pleaded with his father to let him play internationally, members at the club took up a collection. He had talent. Everyone could see that.
A few days after Mr. Player's win at the British Open, Mr. Sewgolum demonstrated his potential by winning the Dutch Open. The victory made him a hero among Indians back home. Nor was the win a fluke. He successfully defended his title in 1960 and triumphed again in 1963.
In South Africa, he was winning non-white tournaments by extraordinary margins, 20 shots or more. But prize money for these contests was a pittance compared to the sums available in tournaments for whites.
Once in a while he was permitted to play against whites, usually whenever the government figured to win political points abroad by showing that apartheid wasn't completely inflexible. Nevertheless, apartheid rules forced Mr. Sewgolum to endure many petty indignities.
In 1961, he gained entrance to the South African Open in East London. However, he was denied the right to practice on the course, giving white players an immediate advantage.
During the tournament, Mr. Sewgolum was not allowed to use the clubhouse or enter any facility where liquor was served. He changed into his golfing attire in his car and took his meals there too. None of this helped his state of mind. Mr. Sewgolum finished 16th.
Even when he defeated whites, victory could turn to humiliation with astonishing speed. Mr. Sewgolum won the 1963 Natal Open, played at the Durban Country Club. When rain began falling during the presentation of the trophy, white golfers and spectators retreated to the clubhouse -- which Mr. Sewgolum was prohibited from entering. The moment was captured by Durban photographer Ranjith Kally and published worldwide.
Mr. Sewgolum and Mr. Player lamented the mingling of sport and politics. Each suffered in different ways for their country's racist regime. While Mr. Sewgolum felt the full force of discrimination at home, Mr. Player was a target of anti-apartheid activists in most of the international tournaments he played in.
However, any sympathy he might have engendered was lost with the publication in 1966 of his first autobiography, Grand Slam Golf. In it, he acknowledged solidarity with South African prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd and apartheid. He wrote that blacks and whites should develop separately and that he saw no evidence he was living in a police state.
Much later in his career, after Nelson Mandela's release from prison, Mr. Player published another autobiography in which he acknowledged that apartheid was "a terrible system," and that he had been brainwashed. He added that is why he didn't protest when Mr. Sewgolum was denied the right to compete in white tournaments in the 1960s -- when their careers were at a peak.
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There was a profound hunger, especially within the Indian community, to see the golf prodigies compete on home soil. It was finally satisfied at the Durban Country Club in 1965.
That was the year Mr. Player would complete his Grand Slam at age 29 by winning the U.S. Open. But in Durban, Mr. Sewgolum, 36, was the better player. He vanquished Mr. Player by one shot on the 72nd hole of the Natal Open.
Sadly, the victory proved the apogee of Mr. Sewgolum's career. With the win, he showed that an impoverished Indian could defeat South Africa's great white hope. This made him a marked man.
Security officials warned him to stop interfering in sports for whites. Mr. Sewgolum's applications for permits to play in white tournaments were turned down more frequently. In Port Elizabeth, Mr. Swegolum and his manager, Fred Paul, had their lives threatened.
Not being able to play in white tournaments meant a tremendous loss of income for Mr. Sewgolum. In 1966, he earned the equivalent of roughly $5,000, including endorsement deals with Coca-Cola and Slazenger. Mr. Player earned $70,000 the previous year in the U.S. alone.
Then, a debilitating personal blow. In 1966, the suburb that contained his family's home in Durban was declared a white area. Mr. Sewgolum moved with his wife Suminthra and four children out of his shack into a part of town reserved for Indians. There, he propped his golf clubs against the side of his bed.
Mr. Sewgolum continued playing golf, but the system had finally broken him. His skill was still obvious, but his heart, the drive, was not. He became depressed and drank more than was good for him. He died of a heart attack on July 5, 1978.
"Dad died at home," says Rajen. "He was only 49." Rajen, 46, has been a fitness buff since his late 30s. He has taken on the role of family historian. "I'm working on a book purely on the family's feelings about the injustice that was done," he says.
Three years ago, Rajen participated in a one-hour documentary produced by Joel Prince and directed by Rafiq Samsodien. The DVD contains rare footage of Papwa Sewgolum 's play in tournaments. Members of South Africa's secret police have confirmed they were ordered to destroy video evidence of Mr. Sewgolum's skills. It's estimated just 5 per cent of the footage remains.
Mr. Samsodien and Mr. Prince, who are based in Cape Town, are working on a feature film about Mr. Sewgolum's life. They are keeping many of the details to themselves, but expect to have a script ready soon, with a release in 2010. "If we do this right," says Mr. Prince, "This has all the makings of a Best Foreign Film."
He's not the only one who believes this. David Selvan and Georgina Hamilton, an author and South African philanthropist, are co-producing a separate film project, based in part on Chris Nicholson's book. Mr. Selvan is shopping a completed script in Hollywood. "This is a project I believe in deeply," says Ms. Hamilton. "I want to see it get done."
Three years ago, Rajen organized a charity tournament in memory of his father. The idea was to establish a foundation for young golfers from under-privileged backgrounds. Mr. Player accepted an invitation to play, and made donations. Rajen declined to give specifics, but others who attended said they were surprised at how little Mr. Player contributed -- less than $15,000 -- and the type of gifts involved. Many contained the Black Knight insignia of Mr. Player's marketing company.
Mr. Player, who declined an interview request, has run a foundation since 1983. The entity, which operates under the Gary Player brand, holds events and donates the proceeds to poor children around the world.
Mr. Player has won admiration for his efforts. Nevertheless, his career will always be stained by the weak stance he took during apartheid. He seems never to have viewed Mr. Sewgolum's predicament under apartheid as something he could have challenged.
Mr. Player failed to intercede on behalf of a sportsman whose raw talent at least matched his own. Had he at least tried, the world would view his many achievements in golf with greater equanimity. Because he did not, people will always wonder whether his fellow countryman, Papwa Sewgolum, was truly the superior talent.
Sources:
Papwa: The Lost Dream of a South African Golfing Legend, documentary produced by Little L.A. Productions. (Joel@studiocitysa.co.za)
Papwa Sewgolum: From Pariah to Legend, by Christopher Nicholson, published by Wits University Press, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2005. (Welcome to Wits University Press)
Grand Slam Golf, by Gary Player, published by Cassell & Co., London, 1966 (available through Alibris: Used Books, Used Textbooks, Rare & Out-of-Print Books)


© The Ottawa Citizen 2008