DAVID ISAACSON | To flourish, elite athletes need professional administrators

Just for fun, I went through the first-round scores of the Open Championship and compiled the best scores of each hole and added them up.

The total on the par-71 Royal Liverpool was 50, featuring 14 birdies and eagles on the three par fives.

The person capable of shooting that, of course, has yet to be born. 

According to the Guinness World Records the lowest round of golf is 55 by Australian professional Rhein Gibson at the par-71 River Oaks course in Edmond, Oklahoma, in 2012.

Imagine cutting another five strokes off that?

One would have to take the best attributes of Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Anika Sorenstam, Ben Hogan, Gary Player and others and blend them perfectly to create a flawless golfer.

I wonder how long it’ll take before we see that type of perfection?

But then I thought about what I’d find if I added up the worst scores on each hole of the first round. Imagine taking the worst attributes of the worst golfers, slapping them together into a cesspool of freakish human uselessness and zapping it to life with a little electricity.

With two nines of 57 and 60 for an overall 117, I suddenly recognised this club-wielding Frankenstein’s monster. That’s me on a bad day. On many other rounds he still lurks in the shadows, following me around the course and sometimes charging at me on the 18th (though he was nowhere near this past Sunday, I’m pleased to report).

Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous, but I play for fun. At least I try to. 

And that’s the thing about sport. If you’re a weekend warrior, results don’t really matter; and if you’re at elite level, it’s surely still important to enjoy yourself.

But here’s the kicker. Sports administrators handling elite stars need to be professional in the way they operate as well.

South Africa has until midnight on Sunday to qualify the men’s and mixed-gender 4x400m relay teams for the track-and-field world championships in Budapest next month, but the odds of that happening are not particularly high.

To be honest, they’re probably zero, and that’s a crying shame because those could have been medal contenders.

At the national championships, straight after Wayde van Niekerk had run 44.17 sec in the individual race, his fastest time since returning from his 2017 injury, and Lythe Pillay had finished second in a 44.80 personal best, the talk was immediately about a men’s relay.

Van Niekerk initiated it, saying he was keen to take part.

So far only four nations had three 400m athletes qualified automatically for the showpiece in Budapest from August 19-27, and South Africa is one of them. Van Niekerk, Pillay and Zakithi Nene have all beaten the 45-second criterion.

Throw in Gardeo Isaacs and South Africa has a powerful team.

The mixed 4x400m side on paper is also a cracker. Van Niekerk probably wouldn’t be part of it, but even without him it’s a strong team with the fastest two of the other three men teaming up with Zeney van der Walt and Miranda Coetzee.

That’s a team that could push for the podium.

That’s two medals possibilities, but somehow no effort has been made to get the athletes together to try qualify for those relays.

For a nation going through a record track-and-field medal drought of three major meets — the 2019 world champs, 2020 Olympics and 2022 world champs — it’s not as if we can afford to flush two medals down the toilet.

Ultimately this is an administrative failure. Even if Athletics South Africa (ASA) were to argue that they didn’t get buy-in from the athletes, then the question is why they don’t make relay participation compulsory for national selection. Make relays number one priority. 

And while the governing body might get it right to qualify the two teams for the 2024 Paris Olympics — the best chance is sending them to World Relays in Bahamas next year — missing out on Budapest means missing out on a valuable opportunity to gain experience that could prove critical at the Games.

And this is what happens when the Frankenstein monsters of sports administration operate above their level. They’re not there to have fun.