Entering the Kempton Park Golf Club, you first spot a sketch of him after his first Major victory, then the letters ‘E ELS’, that are scribbled just twice on the list of club champions over the years, and finally a photograph of the young Ernie placed just below the words ‘Home course of a prodigy’.

Ernie Els, the three-time Major champion, has slightly more vibrant memories of the place where he learnt his golf. “Some of my earliest memories are of Dad dropping me and my brother Dirk at the golf course on a Saturday morning. We would play three rounds in a day and then Dad would finish work and come get us and we’d be walking up the 18th when it was pitch dark. I loved my time there,” Els told The Indian Express.

If not for those hours spent at the Kempton Park, Els’s cricketing ambitions might have taken prominence over golf. “I always loved playing cricket. To be honest, Dad had a real battle getting me away from cricket to concentrate on golf. But I still catch up with the game. I try to go watch some matches whenever my schedule allows and I’m good friends with a lot of the South African players. Some of them come and play in my invitational golf tournament every year where we raise money for various charities in South Africa,” Els said.

Re-charting connections

Funnily though, the golf club that sponsored Els’s during his junior career is hesitant to use his name for publicity. Mike Sebanz, director of golf at Kempton reasons it out. “The members haven’t seen much of Els lately, his dad and brother, too, have moved out,” he said. But he added: “Els has always acknowledged the club’s influence on his career. Maybe we can use his name, that won’t be wrong after all. That green where he learned to putt is still the same. Hopefully once Els is done playing he will come around this place again and we can rechart his connection with the course,” Sebanz said.

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