The Sunshine Tour: White Golf in an African World

Filed in archive Golf News on April 6, 2008

Courtesy: Pukekohetravel.co.nz

The appointment of a Tour Commissioner is akin to the appointment of a CEO.

Both jobs demand leadership, vision and a strong sense of direction. Both jobs also demand business acumen and no small dose of marketing skill.

It's easy to get it all wrong - pear-shaped as the English would say - and hire the absolutely wrong person for the job.

Fortunately, that doesn't appear to be the case with the new Tour Commissioner in South Africa.



Gareth Tindall has been brought aboard to take the Sunshine Tour to the next level.

This is a tour that is growing quickly and is becoming a powerful regional tour in the Southern Hemisphere, rivaling any of the Asian Tours.

The schedule sees events literally year round with December and January being the most lucrative months for tournaments. 3 European Tour events and the rich Nedbank Open at Sun City with its 4 million dollar purse are crammed into December and January.

Tindall's job, as he sees it, is to use golf to market South Africa. His CV is impressive: former CEO of Hertz Southern Africa, owner of several successful businesses, board director for Dimension Data South Africa and a lawyer by training.

Tindall says his strengths lie in his relationships developed in the South African business world and that is one critical element for any successful new Tour Commissioner to have.

There isn't a golf tournament in the world that doesn't rely on some sort of corporate involvement, even if it's only at the prize table for a local amateur best-ball.

Tindall is obviously a guy who knows people and is connected. He's worth his weight in South African golf.

Prize money on the Sunshine Tour has more than doubled in five years and now sits at 50 million Rand or roughly six and a half million dollars U.S.

One problem Tindall has with growing the Tour and the game in South Africa is that it is still largely populated and played by white folk. South Africa's successful professionals in the past have all been white: Gary Player, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Trevor Immelman (his father, Johan, is the outgoing commissioner) and others.

There are a number of players on the Tour who are not white and that is a good thing.

But they struggle and rarely win any money. Still, they can serve as role models for other non-white golfers in South Africa and in neighboring countries.

From a business point of view, perhaps that's not an issue for Tindall who can continue to rely on his high-level business relationships to secure sponsorships and create new tournaments.

However, at some point, the law of diminishing returns comes into play and the Tour's growth could stall.

South Africa is always walking a fine line in its post-apartheid era. The Sunshine Tour can't escape that truth.

It is definitely a golf tour with its own unique challenges.