There will be two unique innovations when the players set off in the first round of the Alfred Dunhill Championship at Leopard Creek in South Africa tomorrow, both of which are particularly significant, as the mercury is due to hit forty degrees celsius for the next few days. Allied with little breeze it is going to feel quite hot. The locals love to braai, but you could leave the boerewors out for a few hours in the middle of the day and there would be no need for charcoal to grill the bangers. With this in mind, the masterminds at The European Tour have ruled that for the first time ever in competition the players may wear shorts. When the American, Keith Pelley, took over as Chief Executive of The Tour a few years ago, one of his first actions was to allow players to wear shorts on practice days and in Pro-Ams. It was considered a step too far at that stage to allow it in competition. This is a one-off decision for the exceptional circumstances of this week, but it will be a major surprise if it doesn’t lead to a loosening of the strict sartorial rules.
The second innovation is that this will be the first sporting event in South Africa where there will be no plastic bottles on the site. Typically, there would be thousands of small bottles of water and Powerade etc supplied on virtually every hole for the players and at other outlets for the public. This week there will be water fountains everywhere and people will be expected to carry either glass or metal water bottles. When you read the stats about plastic, one is inclined to think “better late than never, but earlier would have been a heck of a lot better!”.
Apparently 8 million plastic water bottles are discarded worldwide every DAY. A plastic bottle takes 450 years to fully decompose. (Not sure who’s worked that one out!). Enough plastic is thrown away each year to encircle the earth four times. There is more micro plastic in the oceans than there are stars in the Milky Way. Scary stuff. No doubt we will still see a few plastic smiles out there, but at least the harmful stuff is banned. Players will have to quickly adapt, because in these temperatures dehydration is a very real threat and it can hit you quickly if you are not constantly taking on liquid. Unless you are a camel.
As I write, on the shaded deck of Buhala Game Lodge beside the Crocodile River, there are elephant, hippo, buck and rhino along the far bank. No camels spotted as yet, but we saw enough of those in the Dubai desert last week. The Bush is unusually and healthily green after three weeks of good rains. From April to late October there had been a grand total of four millimetres of precipitation. The place looked arid and barren. Animals, both wild and farmed, were dying in their thousands. It is truly astonishing how quickly water can revive and rejuvenate. Nature really is a wonderful thing when left to its own devices.
The sooner plastic, in all shapes and guises, is permanently banned worldwide, the better off we will all be. I am looking forward to being out in the sun all day, walking round the hilly course with a star group of players…..and my metal water bottle, which hopefully won’t get too hot to handle.
ADayInTheStrifeOf 