South African swimming star Roland Schoeman talks to GRANT SHUB about learning to play golf, championing local athletes, and which of the gold medal-winning ‘Awesome Foursome’ is the worst golfer.
Three-time Olympic medallist Roland Schoeman, who represented Team South Africa at four Olympic Games over a decorated professional swimming career, is an avid golf fan. But his attempts to qualify for Paris 2024 coupled with his profession as a real estate agent has significantly limited his playing time on the greens in Phoenix, Arizona.
However, having failed to attain a qualifying time at South Africa’s National Championships, which doubled as Olympic trials at the Newton Park Swimming Pool in Gqeberha in April, the 43-year-old is set to tee up more regularly as he appears to have said goodbye to a swimming career which peaked at the 2004 Olympics. Schoeman was part of the ‘Awesome Foursome’ that claimed gold in the 4x100m freestyle relay.
‘Back in high school we would mess around with golf clubs on the field,’ Schoeman tells Compleat Golfer. ‘But I never had the opportunity to pick up a left-handed golf club so I had to teach myself how to play right-handed.’
Schoeman underlines that golf was ‘something that was fun to do’ but it wasn’t until he got the opportunity to attend the 2005 Masters that it really fostered his love for it and introduced him to the sport and some of the professionals. A year earlier, Schoeman first met Tim Clark and the duo have built a friendship which has spanned two decades and consists of regular braaiing.
Schoeman reveals that he only played six times in the past 15 months because he was so focused on getting to another Olympics and trying to develop his real estate business.
In terms of his handicap, Schoeman moves between a 13 and a 15, with it currently being the former.
For years, Schoeman was a brand ambassador for Adidas and TaylorMade and he is keen to pick up both relationships when he returns to South Africa on a full-time basis.
Having attained American citizenship in 2022, Schoeman’s goal is to move back to his homeland for at least two or three years from as early as next year with his fashion model and real estate agent partner, Miriah Schneider, in tow.
Having competed at four Olympics and won three medals, Schoeman is philosophical about missing out on qualification for Paris 2024. He stresses that for him the Olympics is always the pinnacle but for many professional golfers it hasn’t been at the top of their agendas.
While Justin Rose reportedly travels with his Olympic medal everywhere he goes because he is so proud of the achievement, the Johannesburg-born golfer who represents England is the exception rather than the rule.
‘If you look at golf, the pinnacle is the four Majors rather than Olympic Games once every four-year cycle. So my hat goes off to the golfers who go to the Games because that’s the pinnacle of what I’ve done and to see other athletes take pride in it is special.’
Schoeman says that his chipping and putting remain the strengths of his game but he has enjoyed the advance in technology which has enhanced his long game. Of himself, Ryk Neethling, Lyndon Ferns and Darian Townsend, who made history 20 years ago in Greece, Schoeman states that he is the best golfer of the group, while Townsend is probably the worst.
If that fourball were to transpire, Schoeman says that it would be ‘a lot of fun’ but it may be best if they were the last group out of the clubhouse because the pace of play could be pretty slow.
Playing standards aside, Schoeman would relish sharing memories outside the swimming world off the back of an incredible bond built.
‘We pushed each other every single day to get to that gold medal and world record,’ he recalls. ‘Not only was the medal a bonding factor but the training together, brotherhood and investment in each other was pretty special and will never be broken.’
If the achievements at Athens 2004 were Schoeman’s highest high, testing positive for a banned substance and being suspended for 12 months in 2020 was his lowest low. It forced him to grow as a man and grapple with his identity beyond being Schoeman the swimmer.
However, he still has a bone to pick with WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) and says they continue to prove they selectively apply the rules where they see fit. He argues that if the rules had been applied to him as they were for the 23 Chinese swimmers cleared before the Tokyo Olympics, he would have been able to continue to compete owing to the level of contamination in his urine being minuscule.
Moving to South African golfers at the top echelon of the game, Schoeman says that he wishes we had more players at the summit.
‘In the past, we always had five players who were in the top 50 but I don’t know why that isn’t the case right now and there appears to be a bit of a disconnect.’
There is also a disconnect between the PGA and LIV Golf Tours in what has been described as golf’s civil war.
Dean Burmester, who earned over R100-million on the LIV Golf Tour last year, didn’t compete at the most recent Masters but he is flying the South African flag in the Saudi-funded league.
‘The reality is that if there is a monopoly you are never going to have fair competition and the PGA is a non-profit that sits with billions of dollars and those funds aren’t going to the athletes who helped build the sport,’ says Schoeman.
As a consequence, the LIV Tour is an increasingly attractive option.
Schoeman, who in 2005 famously turned down an offer reportedly worth R20-million to swim for Qatar, regrets the decision from a financial front using a retrospective scope.
‘At the time I looked at it emotionally instead of in a holistic, business-applied manner,’ he says. ‘I think I was blinded by patriotism and back then several professional athletes told me to take the money and run. Being young in the sport and having done so well, I thought my country, Sascoc and businesses would be loyal to me as South Africa’s most successful swimmer at the time but in reality, they weren’t. I made the right personal decision but the wrong business one.’
In 2021, Schoeman tweeted that he would like to put his name up for nomination for SA sports minister. While it drew mixed reactions from the public, he remains passionate about his nation.
What infuriates Schoeman about SA sport across the board is that as a country in general in almost every single sport, it’s not about the athlete but rather the executive, how much money they make and the events they can attend.
He says a Siya Kolisi of the golf world can only be unearthed if the necessary exposure is duly afforded.
‘In South Africa we have some high-performance athletes but the Springboks are truly the only high-performance team and do so well because their systems are in place,’ Schoeman notes. ‘When we become athlete and performance-based, it’s going to go a long way but until then we are going to produce sub-par performances for many cycles.’
– This article first appeared in the June 2024 issue of Compleat Golfer magazine.
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