Dean Elgar, who played 86 Tests for South Africa from 2012 to 2024, is a keen golfer but his clubs have been gathering dust ever since his wife gave birth to twins eight months ago. Having at one stage played up to four rounds of golf a week, he is only playing one or two rounds a month due to his cricket commitments and paternal duties.

Elgar, whose father Richard was a semi-professional soccer player, was a late bloomer when it came to golf and only started taking it seriously when he was playing domestic cricket for the Eagles in Bloemfontein.

Elgar holds the distinction of batting left-handed but playing golf right-handed.

'It basically boils down to my dad not wanting to buy me a set of left-handed (or right-handed) clubs because he said that I wasn't going to take golf seriously, and saw that I was playing every sport under the sun,' Elgar says from his home in Pretoria during the off-season of playing county cricket for Essex Cricket Club.

Elgar, who is currently playing off a 7 index, was at one time as low as a 3.8 index when he was playing plenty of golf, with a culture of it at both domestic and international level.

In the prime of his Proteas career, the former Test skipper was awarded ambassadorship at Silver Lakes Golf Course. The 38-year-old is also part of an exclusive club, having been awarded a lifetime honorary membership to Leopard Creek by Johann Rupert himself.

'Mr Rupert and his committee voted me in which was an incredible honour,' says Elgar, who still has a further year to run on his Essex contract.

When Elgar called time on his Proteas career and moved to the UK in 2024, the aim was to play plenty of golf during his spare time, but the weather often had the final say.

A highlight for Elgar was when he was invited by the Stingers to play in a Pro-Am at the JCB Golf and Country Club.

'Back then Chris Bentley was the main man at JCB who organised it and we got Simon Harmer to join us for the tournament,' says Elgar, who has played with Louis Oosthuizen and is friends with Dean Burmester.

Elgar is a proponent of LIV Golf which will come to South Africa for the first time next March at Steyn City.

'LIV was at first perceived as the fast food of golf but now they're trying to make it a lot more professional by changing a few things,' says Elgar. 'At the start we thought LIV Golf, like T20 cricket, was gimmicky but it's taken over the global scope of world cricket. In turn, I love the LIV Tour concept and you can see the big dogs they've signed are still hungry to perform and they are not just there for the pay-cheques.

'Steyn City is an awesome course and I think they are going to put on some spectacle,' says Elgar of the venue for Africa's maiden LIV Golf experience. He predicts that the Stingers, which are made up of Burmester, Oosthuizen, Branden Grace and Charl Schwartzel, will prove one of the strongest teams competing at their home event.

'It's good for South African sport and not just South African golf,' Elgar says. 'A lot of time South African sport gets shunned away, kicked to the curb and not given enough respect for what they actually do within the world scope.'

In terms of the prize money, Elgar stresses that 'you have to blink your eyes a couple of times to make sense of it'.

With LIV Golf backed by immensely rich and powerful people, he says it shows that other organisations put a cap on athletes' earnings. In that sense, he believes the PGA Tour got the shake-up it needed and is now rewarding their golfers with larger contracts.

Elgar, who was succeeded by Temba Bavuma as Test captain, played quite a bit of golf with him. 'I know he's a handy golfer and when he's injured he tends to take up a lot of golf which helps him in his rehab,' he quips.

Bavuma, like Elgar, was a late developer and got in most of their rounds at home where it's far easier to have your clubs around.

In terms of clubs, Elgar makes use of Cobra and was sponsored by Puma, but that partnership ended when he retired from international cricket. These days Elgar is a big fan of Titleist and says he would be keen to collaborate with a golf brand of their stature.

'If the professionals are using them then I'm pretty sure they are more than good enough for an amateur,' Elgar concludes with a smile, having only ever played with Titleist golf balls.

DEAN ELGAR | DAVE MORTON | FLICKR