Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
In a week where Tiger Woods was making headlines for all the wrong reasons many people forgot that the season isn't quite yet finished with two big tournaments taking place on either side of the Atlantic.
Tiger's much publicised problems caused him to withdraw from his own tournament at the World Challenge in California, meaning not only a lot of disappointed spectators, television bosses and sponsors, but a late invitation for Northern Ireland's Graeme McDowell. And the Irishman didn't disappoint pushing Jim Furyk all the way for his first victory in two years. But as a spectacle, the tournament lost a lot of its appeal once you-know-who withdrew.
In South Africa at the same time a far brighter event was taking place. An elite, exclusive field of 12 invitees was doing battle at the Gary Player Country Club, Sun City at the 2009 Nedbank Golf Challenge.
This was the 29th edition of this great event, one whose list of winners is basically a who's who of golf over the past 30 years. It has always provided a fitting finale to the golfing season.
Robert Allenby did his best to give it away but finally won the $1.2 million first prize by defeating Henrik Stenson at the third hole of a sudden-death play-off.
On a final day of fluctuating fortunes Allenby overturned playing partner Retief Goosen's two-shot overnight lead to join defending champion Stenson at the top of the leaderboard on 11-under-par before prevailing in a nervy play-off to become the first Australian to take the title.
Allenby squandered a chance to win it outright on the 72nd hole of regulation play when he failed to make the required par four after pushing his second far to the right, then pitching too strongly before putting too weakly.
The tall Australian from Melbourne had a putt to take the money and run but staggeringly left it short - thus setting up a sudden-death play-off against Stenson, a man who had himself three-putted the 18th to miss posting a target of 12 under.
This meant the two of them had to go back to the 18th to try to settle it in a format that required the last hole of the Gary Player course to be played three times and if a winner did not emerge to then start at the 16th until someone cracked.
So sudden-death it was with Allenby and Stenson the last men standing. They would end up having to go back to the 18th tee three times before Allenby, who missed his national open to travel to South Africa, accomplished a feat that Australian major winners such as Greg Norman, David Graham and Steve Elkington could not pull off before him.
In the end Allenby was a deserving winner as he was far and away the most consistent over the four days with only six dropped shots (two in his last four holes) and an inordinate number of putts that skimmed the hole - plus he didn't have a 6 on his card on Sunday!
Allenby improved his play-off record to an amazing 11 out of 12 and finally found himself being able to take two putts to win - a luxury he was able to gratefully accept, quipping: "When you get two putts you might as well make the most of it!"
Wise thinking indeed.
Next week I'll be looking back over the golfing season and reviewing our panel of experts predictions for '09 to see how they did. In a year that contained so many surprises, 'not very well' would be my suspicion!
