Boring Masters champion Trevor Immelman another example that South Africans are closet hilarious people

Trevor Immelman is a slowpoke golfer and not very animated on the course. His blowout of the field today didn’t make for very compelling television (had I known, our group definitely would have played an extra nine this afternoon instead of rushing home to watch). It’s hard to really get behind a major champion who shot a final-round 3-over with no real threats.

My opinion of the guy changed at the press conference. I love a guy with a self-deprecating sense of humor.

“I hadn’t been looking at the leaderboard all day, but I figured I must have been doing well because I had just made double and people were clapping for me…”

Or how about this quote, not exactly validating his place in golf immortality: “I missed the cut last week and I won the Masters this week…That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

I shared bunk beds on a cruise ship with a South African a few years ago for several months. He was a burly, former military man and if you passed him in the hallway, you were kind of nervous he’d clock you in the face (then again, when you run your mouth like I do sometimes, you’re sort of worried everyone wants to clock you in the face).

He didn’t really seem like a jokester. And I think subconsciously Americans may be initially standoffish with South Africans. I think it’s because growing up, the only time South Africa was discussed in the classroom it was because of Apartheid, wars, hate crimes and poverty. We are taught a very one-sided history of South Africa in America.

But I didn’t have to know him long to find him utterly hilarious (and not in a ‘look at me, I’m being a drunk idiot’ way - a humorous on multiple levels of intellect kind of way).

Idle chit-chats with he and his buddies were often entertaining. He was a great story teller and had this fabulous, dry sense of humor. Sometimes I wouldn’t even catch a joke of his until I was alone eating lunch the following day.

He always told me great stories about South Africa and I had the chance to go a few months later. My buddies and I spent two weeks there in 2006 and it was plenty more of the same. Not only are they incredibly hospitable, be sure to share a few beers with them or tag along with one on a safari or something. I played in a foursome with two Afrikaaners in Plettenberg Bay at Goose Valley and nearly soiled myself multiple times during the round laughing, and the head pro brought us a bucket of Pilsner Urquell on the 10th hole because some members had jumped ahead of us. One of my buddies on that trip quit his job two months later and moved to Cape Town, where he lives today. I’m tempted to join him, but I just can’t get past their monthly internet bandwidth rations.

I’m sure TravelGolf.com’s Tim McDonald, who spent some time in South Africa a few years ago himself will concur that South Africans are all too entertaining.

Fellow South African Gary Player even dropped a funny on us earlier during coverage. On his back nine 30 in 1978, which could have been a 27 if not for three near-missed putts: “I’m glad I missed those putts, because had I shot a 27, the members would have never invited me back.”

Trevor Immelman: pretty boring golf game (don’t you wish you could call your own game ‘boring’?), but try and invite him or another South African to your next dinner party.

And I’m glad Immelman got a haircut. That bowl cut he sported over his visor during the 2005 Masters was brutal.