A feature of the achievements of South African golfers is that different players won certain tournaments a number of times – none are more impressive than Gary Player and Ernie Els in the World Match Play Championship over the West Course at Wentworth.

Wentworth's long-running matchplay event started out as the Piccadilly World Match Play Championship, pitting eight of the world's best golfers in head-to-head combat over 36 holes.

The first line-up consisted of the 'Big Three', Player, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, plus Peter Butler, Kel Nagle, Christy O'Connor, Neil Coles and Brian Huggett. Player saw off Venturi 4&2 in round one but then suffered a chastening 8&6 defeat to Palmer in the semi-final. Palmer went on to defeat Coles, who had beaten Lema and Devlin, first-round winner over Nicklaus, 2&1 in the first final.

That bronze medal would have irked Player and he went on to win the next two championships in 1965 (a halcyon year for the Black Knight) and 1966, beating Peter Thomson 3&2 in his first final – after a dramatic come-from-behind win over Tony Lema in the 36-hole semi-final – and Nicklaus 6&4 in the next. Player, a matchplayer if ever there was one, would claim the title five times, beating Bob Charles 1up in 1968, Nicklaus 5&4 in 1971 and Australia's Graham Marsh at the 40th hole two years later. Player reached a sixth final, losing 3&1 to Hale Irwin in 1974.

The championship would in time change sponsors and alter its format but for many years it remained the ultimate matchplay event in world golf.

In 1994 Ernie Els arrived at the Virginia Water estate in Surrey, on the south-western fringes of London, as the reigning US Open champion, having won his first Major in June.

He would have had no inklings of the part Wentworth would play in his life, and capitalising on the frequent times he would have been involved in matchplay as an amateur, he set about winning the first of what would end up being a record seven championships. In the final, Els beat Colin Montgomerie – who, with Loren Roberts, he had beaten in the playoff for the US Open – 4&2.

However, commentators and pressmen were agog at the astonishing play produced by Els and Seve Ballesteros in the first round. Ballesteros made 14 birdies, including seven in a row, and four of them were worth only a half. Ernie drew first blood by holing a 130m 8-iron for an eagle two at the 3rd, and from then on was always ahead in a match for the ages that set up a semi-final which pitted him against the US Masters champion, Spaniard José María Olazábal, in the next round.

Ernie made it a hat-trick by taking the next two in '95 and '96 (beating Steve Elkington and Vijay Singh 3&1 and 3&2 respectively) and reached his fourth final in a row in '97, this time going down by one hole to Singh.

In 2002 Ernie went on another run of three in a row, taking out Sergio Garcia 2&1 in 2002, Thomas Bjørn 4&3 in 2003 and Lee Westwood 2&1 in 2004 to make it a record of six victories.

In time Els would acquire a home on the Wentworth Estate and be commissioned to revamp the West Course into the layout on which the BMW PGA Championship is now played.

In winning his seventh championship in 2007, Els was determined to get the job done quickly – for a reason. He beat Argentina's Ángel Cabrera 6&4 and then rushed off to catch a waiting flight to Paris so that he could catch up with the Springboks who perchance beat Cabrera's compatriots, the Argentine Pumas, in the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup at the Stade de France.

DON MORLEY | ANDREW REDLINGTON | GETTY IMAGES