05 July 2021 Dear Members, Administration Covid-19
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NEWSLETTER JULY 2021 THE SENIOR TOUR MANAGEMENT: Your management continues to strive for good governance with respect to the activities of the Senior Tour, while always trying to secure and deliver to most of the expectations from members. 05 July 2021 Dear Members, Administration Covid-19 Much has happened again since our last Newsletter. The government has moved the risk and mitigation protocols and terms and conditions for citizens and visitors back to Level 4. The government gazette document as well as GolfRSA details on how we should behave in the current stage of the pandemic is available on our website and the appropriate websites of the country and GolfRSA. We have complied with government regulations and instituted a company compliance officer namely, Fiona Burger, who will dovetail this duty with her financial and operating duties at events. She will be ably assisted by Gerda, Henry Roodt’ partner when necessary. This is to advise that we have also been in contact with the compliance officer for professional golf in southern Africa and we have ironed out our shortfalls in the running of tournaments relating to Covid conditions. A Covid compliance sheet with access codes are produced at each event which stipulates and confirms how each participant must be compliant with regulations of HealthDocs or Testing, as well as in competition. The compliance officer will be of higher authority than the Tournament Director when non- conformance of Covid regulations is encountered. i.e., At registration if a player cannot prove health details in line with HealthDocs or a test certificate, he/she will not be able to participate. We urge members to continually check on our website for Covid level adjustment levels and for details of play that will change from time to time. We encourage our members and members guests in pro-ams all to go on to HealthDocs daily to input their status as previously communicated. You must have consecutive 10 days captured on your App to secure your 1 | P a g e 2) participation in an organised SAST tournament. Failing this, you will have to produce a certificate of your Covid status by way of an antigen test at your cost. Please be advised that the Senior Tour does not compile the Covid rules and at the recent event at Copperleaf, emotions by members ran high without full acceptance of decisions taken by tournament staff, in the best interest of the safety to all. We request members to be respectful to staff administering events. While we are currently on Level 4 protocols, we eagerly await further instructions on 11 July 2021 from the President, as infection rates have increased drastically leading to the further risk of infection levels soon. This places our next event at Kyalami and others at risk of being postponed to later dates. POPIA Act From 1 July 2021 the government have introduced the POPIA Act to ensure privacy of personal information for all. Please see our website for details on a recent posting. The Senior Tour will continue to use your contact details on file unless you send a written note to [email protected] requesting the removal of your details from our database. Where the Senior Tour management has distributed member contact information to the current or past Players’ Advisory Committees and current or past directors, this will only and solely used for member/PAC business purposes individually without infringing on the rights of members in any way and always observing the POIA act contents. The website contains photographs and content of current and past members. By way of this newsletter, we also advise that members send in written notice if they wish their details to be withdrawn by sending a note to [email protected]. At some previous events and on membership application forms members have signed an ‘image’ rights declaration that the Senior Tour may use player/member photographs and editorial for media purposes. A new declaration document for members to sign will be available shortly to fit with the POIA Act relating to Senior Tour business. Management The Directors of the Senior Tour are: Hinner Koster, Chairman, Fiona Burger, Financial Director, Pat Lowth, Tournament Director, Neville Clarke, Director of Operations and Administration (COO), Corne Basson, Director, Nico van Rensburg, Director, Derek Ferreira, and Henry Roodt Directors from the PAC. Your PAC is as follows: Derek Ferreira, Chairman and Director, Henry Roodt, Vice Chairman and Director, Craig Frauenstein, Paul Marks, Grant Muller, Kenneth Dube, Nic Henning. Chris Davison has resigned from the PAC, and we await the reasons thereof. 2 | P a g e 3) The unaudited 2020 financials were discussed on screen at the AGM in March this year. At the time of the AGM, and as they were not audited, we did not copy members. We are pleased to announce that the managed accounts for 2020 have been signed off by the Auditors, Chairman and COO and reflect no change from those presented at the AGM. Remember that 2020 was a Covid year with low financial activity and has shown a loss for the year again. It was explained to the AGM that the loan from the Sunshine Tour was the determining factor on the debt side of the balance sheet. Our repayment plan was hampered through the lack of events in 2020 and therefore income generation. In previous years we have supported the Simon Hobday event prize fund through player levies and the management fees from two SA Senior Opens. If these monies had rather gone to the repayment of the ST loan, then the loan would have been liquidated by now. We endeavour to give members enough time to peruse the financials prior to the next AGM by way of secure and private member password access on the website We have a five- year period to repay the loan and ST are aware of the position as discussed with them in January. We will review our position again towards the end of the year given the Covid impact and our repayment position, that remains a priority. TOURNAMENTS Tournament Results Opportunities have been given to members to participate in four events this year. Venue Winner Score Event Name Centurion Chris Williams 66 Senior Tour Pro-Am Plettenberg Bay James Kingston 275 SASO Humewood Chris Williams 213 NMBC Copperleaf Doug McGuigan 137 Fidelity The order of merit after four events has been posted on the website for members and non- members. We congratulate Doug McGuigan on winning his third tournament out of six starts on the Senior Tour. It is also wonderful to acknowledge the membership of Keith Horne, who made his presence felt at Copperleaf with a second- place finish to Doug on a score of 139 over the 36-holes. Given the uncertainty of the Covid third wave position prevailing now, we have been in contact with our sponsors. The Sun City pro-am 2021 scheduled and announced to be held from 23-25 August, over 54 holes over the Lost City course, is still booked pending further Covid adjustment levels by government. Sun International have closed all their facilities following the recent government announcement until a future relaxation in Covid related business instructions are concerned. We therefore can only wait in tandem for their 3 | P a g e 4) business to re-open. Dates for October have been released for an event at the Wild Coast Sun, but the November dates are still booked at the same venue. Fidelity have allowed sponsorship for the next event at Kyalami pending the 11 July 2021 President’s national address of the nation. The two events scheduled for Blue Valley and Eagle Canyon have been suspended and new dates will probably have to be established. We are still working on a Groblersdaal event in early September on a 9- hole course which may be a limited field size tournament. This will be followed by events in Orkney, Witbank, and Kingswood (George) in October, while we expect to have the SA Senior Masters at Silver Lakes (3-5 November) followed by events at Dainfern and Wild Coast Sun. The co-sanctioned event with the Legends Tour is still work in progress scheduled for the last week in November and requiring large sponsorship but seems unlikely to happen. MEMBERSHIP-SUBSCRIPTION, CARDS AND BADGES Subscriptions have been held to R1600, the same as last year for the period 01 January 2021 to 31 December 2021 for the regular membership category. Some members are still delinquent in paying their subscriptions and expect to enter events. Others want to, at this time of the year, having dodged the Q-School in January, to become affiliate members and enter tournaments. Past members in these positions must re-apply for membership and go through the process membership acceptance after subscription payment. Members who continue to post high scores at tournaments will be notified and they may be suspended from events for a period of time or even have their membership revoked. This step is generally taken in line with the Senior Tour Rules and Regulations. WEBSITE REVIEW AND RECONSTRUCTION The website reconstruction is taking longer than expected to complete, and we hope for a ‘cut over’ to the new look by 31 July 2021. In the meantime, we again request players to forward their career results to [email protected], so that we can place the details on the Players’ section that will require a password from the player to access. Ingress Technologies are busy with the enhanced design. We are also talking to a media/digital marketing company interested in compiling performance clips and interviews at our tournaments for social media interaction.