Golf is always a numbers game. It’s you against the course, each hole a mini-event, your performance marked in pencil before moving to the next tee.

Everyone has a “magic number” to shoot for. Most will start trying to break 100 and when that target is achieved, the next frontier is 90, and then 80. After that you start getting into serious territory. You’re now a single-figure handicapper with eyes on one day breaking 70 on a forgiving course. Think King David Mowbray, Somerset West or State Mines.

Then the discussion turns to the pros. Their magic number is 60.

Sub-60 has been achieved 15 times on the PGA Tour – Al Geiberger became the Neil Armstrong of golf in 1977, before Chip Beck became the second player to do so in 1991. The most recent was Jack Knapp's 59 at the Cognizant Classic. Beating 60 has only been achieved once on the LPGA Tour and DP World (European) Tour, and twice on the LIV Golf circuit.

In South Africa there have been 11 instances of a sub-60, with Peter Karmis’ 59 at the 2009 Lombard Classic at Royal Swazi Spa the first on the Sunshine Tour.

The lowest are the 57s posted by Daniel Greene at a club medal competition at Bosch Hoek in 2019 and Louis Oosthuizen’s at Mossel Bay in 2002. Oosthuizen also owns the rarest of doubles – two sub-60s. His 59 was even more memorable than the 57. He arrived at the 18th tee at Mossel Bay on 57, hit his driver to the front of the green and sank the long eagle putt.

We are talking about breaking barriers because in back-to-back tournaments on the Sunshine Tour we saw a player come agonisingly close to a 59.

Frenchman Sebastien Gros followed an 80 at the Cell C Cape Town Open with a course-record 60 at Royal Cape, showing the effect the South-Easter has.

A week later Wilco Nienaber (above) also carded a 60, on the opening day of the NTT DATA Pro-Am on Fancourt’s Outeniqua layout. Although fairway placing was allowed, when chasing 59 the circumstances aren’t important. It was a cruel 60 in that, just like a Test cricketer closes a day’s play in the 90s and has to return the next day to complete their century, Nienaber spent overnight Thursday thinking about a 59 after the weather had forced him inside after 11 holes.

He returned on the Friday and needed to birdie the last for a 59. He had a chance, but by his own admission, “hit a poor putt”.

But these tussles with 59 and 60 are the same experienced by golfers all the way down the food chain. Breaking 70, 80, 90, 100, even 110 for some. And when achieved, the satisfaction makes us get out of bed again the next day and try to do it again.

And once you’ve played for many years, attention turns to that other magic number: shooting your age, further proof that golf really is a game for everyone.

Gary Lemke