The GOLFORAMA Scene - 2011/12 Season

                                                                    

                                                                 HENRY de GRAEFF
                                                          NATIONAL GOLFORAMA CHAIRMAN

Golforama involvement in Nomads has enjoyed increased support and enthusiasm from Members and Clubs in 2011.
The cooperation from Club coordinators, Executive Committees, Nomads and a number of regular non-Nomads has once again been exceptional. It was very special to hear from Grant Wilson, (Sunshine Tour Chief Operating Officer), at the SA Open how much they appreciate our efforts. We are extremely important to their continued and future success - valued partners indeed.

Our duties during 2011 covered all Winter, Summer, as well as a few Big Easy, tour events. We also helped at a few special events such as the new Media Challenge and both Qualifying Schools. In total this amounted to 30 events.
The Swaziland Open afforded us the opportunity to expose and "train" some of their potential Swaziland Nomads.
The intention is to prepare them to run any future Swaziland Tournaments and thus start supporting their own Furtherance of Golf projects.

Through the fees charged for all these events we were able to contribute close to R 800 000 to a whole variety of Junior Tournaments and other worthy golfing endeavours. We have worked closely with Ken Walker on the Furtherance of Golf project and 2012 will see a more structured approach to money allocated to all areas of Junior Golf as well as requests to assist outside of the Junior Golf arena. As an example, one of the strategies is for Nomads to be the title sponsor for ALL the National Boys and Girls stroke play events (under 19, 16, 14 and 12s).

The new Sunshine Tour Live Scoring System was introduced at the beginning of the Summer Swing. As with the introduction of most new computer systems there have been a number of frustrations and difficulties. What is not fully understood is that the Live Scoring element, whilst a crucial part of the Sunshine Tour structure and offering, is only part of a much wider integrated system - finance, membership, Tournament back office, secretarial and so on. Therefore, it is understandable that some of the changes we would like to see will only be addressed during the Winter Season. There is no doubt however that once completed the new system will be a big improvement over the old PC system.

In conclusion, I would just like to reiterate what was said last year: The effort and support from all those involved in Golforama contributes significantly to our Nomads aims and objectives. Nomads over the years have contributed greatly to the expansion and excellence of Golf in South Africa. Golforama has played a dual role in this - providing a score information service at Professional Tournaments and financially contributing to a variety of projects which have assisted talented golfers to reach their goals.

Henry de Graeff