South Africa’s Fairly Dismal Sporting Weekend

The Women’s World Cup of Golf (Home – Final Standings) provided an ounce of satisfaction for SA sports fans this weekend, who were otherwise pounded with dismal showings in football and cricket.

SA golf pairing Laurette Maritz and Ashleigh Simon (an amateur) turned home-ground advantage into a 7th-place finish at the Cup. They had an aggregate score of 4 over par – a fairly distant 11 shots behind Cup winners Annika Sorenstam and Liselotte Neuman of Sweden, but decidedly better than the wooden-spooners from New Zealand, who finished on +18.

Meanwhile, national soccer side Bafana Bafana maintained the grim form which prevented South Africa from gaining a berth in this year’s World Cup. Its 2-0 loss to Guinea at the African Cup of Nations was probably its worst defeat ever. SA Blog is waiting for the guillotines to appear outside SAFA House in Soweto, where the fat and ugly soccer monsignors who run the game are currenlty taking their morning chocolate.

Last, the SA cricket side failed to chase Australia’s modest 245 all-out in its one-day match on Friday. The Proteas were clean-bowled by Brett Lee about 50 runs short. It would seem they might not make it to the final match in the triangular series with Sri Lanka, in which case the “youthful exuberance Down Under” experiment can be written off as a non-starter.