Former Proteas spinner Pat Symcox talks about taking on the greens more often, bird-watching with Mark McNulty and once being pelted with an entire roast chicken Down Under. By GRANT SHUB.
Pat Symcox, who played 20 Tests and 80 ODIs for South Africa, had the aim of playing on the South African Seniors Golf Tour by the time he turned 50. But 13 years on, the man fondly known as Symmo admits it became something of a pipedream as he morphed into a real estate titan.
It took Symcox 15 years to build his business after quitting cricket. However, now that he is only seven years away from 70 and his business is booming with five franchises and 60 agents operating along the coastline, golf will ideally no longer take a backseat.
‘I have been immersed in golf for a long time and have been playing the game for around 30 years,’ Symcox tells Compleat Golfer. ‘At the moment, I’m playing twice a week but I’d like to double it because I like the challenge of the game and the fact you are never complete as a player. As an ex-professional sportsman, golf substitutes the adrenaline rush I got when I played and keeps the competitive edge alive within me.’
Symcox also reveals that he is a bird-watcher and when he plays with friend and former Zimbabwean-Irish professional golfer Mark McNulty, who is an even bigger twitcher, he always takes a pair of binoculars and his camera with him to the course. McNulty, who claimed 59 professional titles, enjoyed his best Major result at The Open Championship in 1990 where he ended tie second with Payne Stewart, behind winner Nick Faldo.
Speaking of Major winners, Symcox is concerned that 12 years have elapsed since a South African male golfer won a Major. Ernie Els was the last man to hold that distinction and Symcox says that we don’t have a dominant South African golfer any more in the top bracket. He highlights how Els, who he was close to, along with Retief Goosen carried the South African flag for so long and it is now up to the next generation of local golfers to make their mark and win a maiden Major.
‘We are producing more players in the top echelon and I think the breakthrough Major will come,’ says Symcox, who has been impressed with the likes of Erik van Rooyen and teen Aldrich Potgieter, who shot two sub-60 scores at the Bogota Open in February.
Symcox describes golf as a ‘great uniter’ and says he is sorry that South Africa doesn’t participate in a tournament like the Ryder Cup which is such a big event. There is talk that Tiger Woods could captain team USA in 2025 and that prospect enthuses Symcox.
‘I have been waiting for Tiger to become captain for quite a while because the wealth of experience and knowledge he can impart would be immense. Not all the great players in the world can transfer their knowledge but I think Woods can because he’s been out of the top echelon for quite a while,’ says Symcox, who was skippered by Kepler Wessels and the late Hansie Cronje across an international career from 1993 to 1999.
Symcox, who 26 years on still holds the joint-record of a 195-run ninth-wicket partnership with Mark Boucher for their stand against Pakistan in 1998, says that the off-greens camaraderie, the fines meetings and the free-flowing beer are highlights at his golf club.
‘I’ve played plenty of golf against many top former sportsmen and there is always a lot of testosterone on the course and beers flowing off it. The other day Errol Stewart and I teed off against Andre Joubert and Joel Stransky and their win was an unpopular one.’
Symcox, who infamously had roast chicken thrown at him by Australian spectators when he was fielding on the third-man boundary at the SCG in 1997, says there have been a number of humorous tales on the golf course to rival what happened during that match. However, chicken-gate has to go down as the strangest moment. During said ODI against Australia, play was stopped after the crowd pelted the unfortunate Symcox with objects which included a full roast chicken. Nowadays he reflects on it with a smile.
‘At that stage of my career I was the senior player and had to take on the role of being on the boundary a lot,’ Symcox recalls. ‘I knew I was going to be subjected to some abuse. We were winning the game and they ended up picking on me. Tennis balls and blocks of ice were thrown my way and then eventually a whole chicken carcass came over me. It was picked up by the TV cameras so quite a big scene was made of it at the time. I must say that when you’re on the field it isn’t fun but today I can laugh about it.’
While nothing is ever likely to come close to chicken-gate on the golf course, Symcox recently experienced something which could be termed caddie-gate at his home course.
‘The other day I was playing at Selborne Golf Club, where I’m a former president and long-time member, and I saw another guy’s caddie running towards my ball after I’d just hit a drive. To my horror, he proceeded to pick up my ball and run away with it,’ says Symcox, who had by this time got into his golf cart, raced across the two fairways, a la Vin Diesel in The Fast and The Furious series, and was in hot pursuit of the perpetrator.
‘I was screaming and shouting like crazy and when I got there I said to him, “What are you doing?”’
The next minute he realised it was a mate of his who had put the caddie up to the prank. He was standing with his fourball and his caddie had already marked Symcox’s ball. He said, ‘Howzit Symmo, nice to see you buddy!’
Having been ready to kill someone in a scenario reminiscent of a Leon Schuster skit, Symcox’s stance softened but he fired a warning shot for future pranksters.
‘We both ended up laughing but it shows how aggressive you get when someone touches your golf ball!’
Reflecting on the current landscape of world golf, Symcox says it’s reminiscent of the Kerry Packer years where the Australian, much like those at LIV Golf, was such a disruptor. In terms of golf’s future, the 63-year-old remains unsure where the pendulum is going to settle and says, ‘It’s not nice seeing top golfers having a go at each other in the media.’
He believes Packer revolutionised the game and brought the equivalent of LIV Golf to cricket. ‘To draw an analogy, not everybody likes T20 cricket but, like LIV Golf, it’s a necessary evil because it’s a disruptor and brings more people to the game.’
Looking back on his cricket career, which began in Kimberley for Griqualand West, Symcox says he doesn’t live with regret but bemoans the fact that he only started his international career at the age of 32 owing to South Africa’s sporting isolation until 1991.
‘I was a much better cricketer in my 20s than in my 30s so I kind of feel I lost those years,’ says Symcox, who took 37 Test wickets. ‘But I was lucky to play around the world in a ’90s era which took us back into world cricket. It was a groundbreaking period of time with a team full of wonderful guys who went on to become greats.’
SYMCOX ON …
His favourite courses
‘Here on the south coast we are blessed with many good golf courses. Along with Selborne Golf Club, which is down the road from me and was the first golf estate in South Africa, there’s Umdoni Park Golf Club and the Wild Coast Sun Country Club. Internationally, Augusta National is firmly on my bucket list and I’d give anything to go.’
The state of his game
‘The thing I like as a recreational golfer is that if I’m a seven or eight-handicap I can still compete against a one or two-handicapper or scratch golfer. At every level, there’s competition but ultimately there’s competition mostly with yourself to try to get better.’
His dream golf partners
‘I once batted with Richard Branson during a Victor Blank fundraising day in England. I think Branson is a nice guy and a top businessman so I’d be happy to play with him on the golf course. Sir Donald Bradman also comes to mind if he were still alive. I would have liked to have played with him and asked about his final ball faced in Test cricket.’
– This article first appeared in the April 2024 issue of Compleat Golfer magazine.
Photo: Ben Radford/Shaun Roy/Getty Images/Gallo Images
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