Gasant Abarder spoke to Oscar-nominated film producer Rafiq Samsodien, who wants to tell the story of Papwa Sewgolum.
Cape Town - “As he lined up to strike the ball, the boy adjusted his body this way and that, emulating the more seasoned golfers he surreptitiously watched as they practised their swings on the golf course nearby.”
The boy described in this extraordinary opening paragraph of the soon-to-be-released biography, Golf’s Lost Legend, by writer Maxine Case, is Papwa Sewgolum – arguably the finest self-taught golfer to have ever played the game.
He did not use a real golf club but a walking stick his fisherman father fashioned from a tree branch.
Papwa would accompany his father to the beach near the Beachwood Country Club in Durban.
The balls hit onto the nearby beach would be Papwa’s training ground.
Although he was known as the man with the wrong grip, there was nothing wrong with the golf game of the first man of colour to win a provincial open in South Africa, beating the legendary Gary Player in the process.
But like all sporting greats who were non-white in apartheid South Africa, Papwa was denied the chance of reaching his full potential.
Now Oscar-nominated film producer Rafiq Samsodien wants to tell the untold story of golf’s greatest exponents.
Rafiq has the calibre; the short film Asad, he co-produced, about the plight of Somali refugees, earned an Academy Award nod in 2013.
Rafiq, who commissioned Papwa’s biography, plans to turn his life story into a major feature film.
When Rafiq tells the story of Papwa’s first encounters with golf on the beach as a young boy, the imagery he conjures up leaves you with goosebumps.
“As a young kid you go with your father wherever he goes on his little escapades. Now you can kind of picture this little kid with his father.
“Back in the day, dogs were taught to bark at non-white people. So the father always used to have a stick to ward off the dogs. The back of the stick was shaped like a golf club,” says Rafiq.
“From a distance Papwa used to watch these people playing golf and he took some kind of likeness to it. So all these balls used to come off the course, from hackers like me.
“Every day this kid used to take the stick and he used to be able to whack the balls, try and find targets and try and get the distance.
“He used to whack this ball from the age of six years old to the age of nine – every day, from the beach to his home, home to the beach, he played wherever he went. It was him, the stick and the ball. And he started to become better and better at what he was doing.”
Papwa’s father recognised a rare talent in his son and approached the country club to see if they would let Papwa work there to get his son as close to the game as possible.
Papwa eventually became a caddie.
It was working as a caddie that Papwa met Graham Wulff, the chemist and businessman who founded the beauty product Oil of Olay as a gift to his wife.
Wulff took an instant liking to the young man and also realised his genius. He often allowed Papwa to play with him in a four-ball at the club – a move that was against the laws of the day. Wulff became like a father figure, especially because Papwa’s father took ill and died.
“At the age of 16 he won his first South African Amateur Open and that set the tone for him. Obviously there were days that he couldn’t really play on the course but there were people like Graham Wulff who just put him to the challenge and came there with his business partners and they’d play a four-ball.
“Graham would always choose Papwa as his partner. Against the odds, he would break the rules because you know back then, with all these apartheid laws, it was very difficult and someone like Papwa could have lost his job.
“But what happened was that he started to become amazingly phenomenal.
“You know there was this window where he was breaking the non-European records in terms of his wins.”
Wulff wanted to give Papwa the chance to compete on the international stage and get a PGA card. But there were hurdles to overcome. “If it wasn’t for this man’s belief in a guy like Papwa, I don’t think Papwa would have been able to play on the international platform.
“What Graham Wulff did was very admirable. At the time that Graham took Papwa to the British Open, was also a time when he was at the cusp of making Oil of Olay an international brand.
“He couldn’t really give as much of his time to Papwa apart from creating the enabling environment by providing the funding and the resources to do that.
“Now this is an interesting part: at the time when he wanted to take Papwa to the British Open to get his PGA accreditation he bought two tickets and he was told by the South African carrier that they wouldn’t fly black people.
“It didn’t stop either one of them. I think that’s where the symbiotic relationship kind of emanated from. Both were cut from a different cloth, but yet quite similar in many respects.
“So Wulff then goes out and he buys himself an aircraft, a little Cessna and takes Papwa on a journey.”
It was 1959 and Papwa would beat Gary Player for the first time in a practice round at Northfield in the British Open.
“He gets to play on a level playing field and basically cleans up in the practising round. The fact that, you know, he gets arrested by the South African security police for being there, he arrives late, he still gets to play, but he doesn’t win, doesn’t make him less of a champion.”
Papwa went on to play in the French Open but missed it by a day because of the complications the South African security police were causing him. But he entered and won the Dutch Open later that year.
He returned to South Africa a hero of non-white sport but he still didn’t get acknowledged as a real champion. In 1960 and 1964 he successfully defended his Dutch Open title.
But the turning point for Papwa, in more ways than one, was winning the Natal Open for the second time in 1965 and beating Gary Player. The story goes that Papwa had to accept the trophy outside in the rain because he wasn’t allowed inside the clubhouse.
It was clear that Papwa had become too powerful a symbol of the sports boycott movement. At the peak of his powers, the apartheid government banned him from participating in, or attending, any PGA tournaments in South Africa.
His passport was taken away and he could no longer compete internationally. In effect, golf was taken away from Papwa and it systematically broke his spirit.
After having successfully commissioned the biography and completing a documentary about Papwa, Rafiq’s focus is now on taking the story to the world in a feature film. The only thing standing in his way is funding.
“I’d like to term it one of Africa’s greatest sports stories, it’s the life and challenges of the first non-white person to have ever won an international tournament during the 50s and 60s.
“The most amazing thing about this guy is that he was illiterate, he was a self-taught golfer, played golf the wrong way with an unorthodox grip. And you know for him to have used the influences and to have had a technical understanding of the game without anybody teaching him just makes this guy an ultimate genius as far as I’m concerned.
“When I heard about this guy’s story I just thought this a story that needs to be told. It’s been a long and arduous journey for us to get to where we are right now. We started off with getting the rights from the family, and I think that’s the most pivotal point in this journey for me.
“This person has been stripped so many times from success, dignity and respect and where his family became the beneficiaries of this injustice.
“We just thought that has to stop, you can’t continually perpetuate this kind of mind-set and behaviour.
“We thought this story is so big, we can’t do it justice with just a documentary.
And what an amazing story, that we are marking the 50th anniversary of Papwa beating the great Gary Player.”
The project has so far reaped rewards. It has been pivotal in getting Papwa recognised with a plaque on the 18th green at the Durban Country Club.
Recently he was also inducted into the South African Golf Hall of Fame.
The momentum has also seen the establishment of the Papwa Sewgolum Foundation. On August 27, Gary Player will be the keynote speaker at a drive in Durban to raise funds for the film and to preview Golf’s Lost Legend. The book is due for release on September 10.
“We need patriots… this is an amazing man and nobody knows what he has done.
“It was difficult to get to him, to break his spirit. The only way that they could have done that was to prevent him from playing and that was the only kind of level of torment that really broke this guy down.
“For me it feels like what we have here is the Rocky of golf. And that’s what we want to focus on. It’s a human drama, backed up against a political canvass.”
Rafiq is calling on benefactors far and wide to help him bring Papwa’s story to life on film.
“I think what we need to do is not just make this guy recognisable on a national level, we’ve got to make this guy recognisable on an international level.
“South Africans have played a pivotal role in society, they have contributed to history, geography, science, innovation and a whole host of other things, let alone sport.
“You take people like Basil D’Olivera, you just have to look at these kind of people and Papwa was one of those shinning examples that has done that for golf.
“I’m going to take some creative licence here and say that Tiger Woods was basically the guy that shaped golf and put people of colour on the golf map.
“But for me Papwa Sewgolum, is the real Tiger of the Woods.
“He’s the first person to have won an international tournament and that’s a historical fact you can’t take that away from him.”
* To find out more about the Papwa Sewgolum film project, contact Rafiq at [email protected] or Jane Pillay [email protected]
* Gasant Abarder is editor of the Cape Argus.
Cape Argus