Ernie Els – praag.org

Ernie Els made R179 million ($18.2 million) last year

Ernie Els was South Africa’s highest-earning sportsman in 2012, making 179 million rand ($18.2 million) last year, according to the country’s Sunday Times newspaper.

The four-time major champion earned $14.7 million from endorsements and commercial work like golf course design, and the remaining $3.5 million in tournament winnings, boosted by his victory at the British Open, according to the rich list compiled by the newspaper.

The top four on the South African sports list were golfers. Louis Oosthuizen, the 2010 British Open champion, made $9.8 million in 2012, Retief Goosen $6 million and Charl Schwartzel $5.9 million.

However, they are some way off Tiger Woods, whom Forbes magazine rated in June as global sport’s highest-earning athlete during the preceding 12 months with $78.1 million.

The South African newspaper said its list was compiled using interviews with leading agents as well as figures from the U.S. PGA and other sports bodies.

While the Sunday Times’ ranking underlined the earning power of golf, it also showed the financial pull of cricket’s Indian Premier League and European and Japanese rugby clubs for South African sports stars.

Cricketer Jacques Kallis makes $305,000 a year playing for his country and $1 million a year from the IPL’s Kolkata Knight Riders. Kallis was No. 6 on the list behind English Premier League footballer Steven Pienaar, who makes an estimated $5 million a year.

Seam bowler Chris Morris is the starkest example of how the IPL is the “land of milk and silly money,” according to the paper. Morris makes $40,000 a season from his Johannesburg-based Lions team, but $625,000 from the IPL’s Chennai Super Kings following this year’s draft.

Rugby players are also profiting from deals with foreign clubs.

Springboks wing JP Pietersen rocketed into the top 10 after signing a $1.1 million per season contract with Japan’s Panasonic Wild Knights. That deal was over five times more than what he makes a year in South Africa off his provincial and national contracts combined, the newspaper said. – AP

Tiger felt ‘different energy’ with Mandela

Black golf star Tiger Woods has remembered how his first meeting with Nelson Mandela 15 years ago was an experience like no other.

“I went down there to play [at] Sun City, and he [Mandela] invited us to his home. And my father and I went to have lunch with him. It still gives me chills to this day, thinking about it,” Woods told journalists at Muirfield in Scotland on Tuesday, where the start of the British Open on Thursday coincides with Mandela’s 95th birthday.

Woods became a poster boy for multiracial America in 1997 when, at just 21, he became the first black golfer to win a major, a feat all the more startling as he did it on a course that up until seven years previously had been off limits to African-Americans.

He described his private lunch the following year with Mandela, South Africa’s anti-apartheid hero, as unforgettable.

“We walked in the room and my dad and I were just kind of looking around. And I said, ‘Dad, do you feel that?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, it feels different in this room.’ And it was just like a different energy in the room,” Woods said.

“And maybe, I’m guessing probably 30 seconds later, I heard some movement behind me and it was [former] president Mandela folding up the paper. And it was pretty amazing.

“The energy that he has, that he exudes, is unlike any person I’ve ever met. And it was an honour to meet him at his home. And that’s an experience that I will never, ever forget.”

Mandela, who overcame 27 years in jail to become South Africa’s first black president and bring an end to decades of whites-only rule, is confined to his Pretoria hospital bed on life-support as the world prepares to mark his birthday with a raft of celebrations and charity events.

Defending British Open champion and South African sporting legend Ernie Els, also paid tribute to Mandela at Muirfield and said it would be “wonderful” if a South African player could win this week and give his sports-mad nation a much-needed morale boost.

“Obviously sport has been a key factor in bringing South Africa together into a democratic place and state,” Els said on Monday. “And president Mandela played such a big part in that; also back in the early 1990s, and the World Cup and … African Nations Cup.”

Els is one of 10 South Africans competing at Muirfield, along with Thomas Aiken, Richard Sterne, Tim Clark, George Coetzee, Charl Schwartzel, Branden Grace, Louis Oosthuizen, Justin Harding and Darryn Lloyd. – AFP

Golfers hope for Mandela recovery

The Sunshine Tour’s professional golfers showed their support for ailing former president Nelson Mandela by wearing beaded South African flags during the first round of the Vodacom Origins of Golf tournament at Selborne Park Golf Club in KwaZulu-Natal.

Jean Hugo, a 13-time winner on tour sported the flag on his cap on Wednesday.

Mandela was known, over the years, to phone South Africa’s top golfers when they achieved internationally.

Shortly after he was admitted to hospital on June 8 for treatment of a recurring lung infection, South Africa’s most successful golfer post 1992, Ernie Els, said Mandela had often contacted him earlier in his career.

“When I won a lot of tournaments in the ’90s and early part of the 2000s, we spoke a lot on the telephone,” Els said in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, where he was preparing to play in the US Open.

“He always felt proud of what the sporting athletes out of South Africa did for the country, you know, winning worldwide events. He always felt very proud of that. Yeah, through that instance we had a really nice relationship.

“We’ll just — we’re hoping for the best. Whatever outcome that might be. I just want him to be well.”

Els said he had not met Mandela for a number of years, but hoped for his recovery.

“Yeah, South Africans, we’re obviously very concerned about President Mandela. He’s 94-years-old now. He’s almost on to his 95th birthday, and he’s been quite ill for a while now.

“So we’re just hoping for the best. I haven’t seen him for quite a few years now. I haven’t seen him for probably seven or eight years now. But we’ve had always a great relationship.” – Sapa