Ernie Els
Height: 6-3
Weight: 210
Birthdate: October 17, 1969
Birthplace: Johannesburg, South Africa
Turned Pro: 1989
Theodore Ernest Els (or Ernie Els as we know him) was born in the October of 1969. He was born in South Africa and has become one of the top professional players in the world. His career has been developing since the mid 1990s and he had his scratch handicap when he was the tender age of fourteen years old.
Ernie is known as “The Big Easy” as he stands 6 foot four inches above the golf course and he has one of the most fluid, seemingly effortless golf swing. Growing up in South Africa, Ernie played lots of different sports before he started golfing. He was a skilled junior tennis player, winning the Eastern Transvaal Junior Championships at thirteen. But his passion, which had begun to grow since he was eight years old, was golf and once he had his scratch handicap his focus was solely on golf.
Ernie first achieved distinction for his golfing in 1984 when he won the Junior World Golf Championship in the boys 13-14 category. Phil Mickelson was second to Ernie that year and Tiger Woods was beginning to flourish in the golf world, winning the Boys 9-10 category of the same year. Small world!
Els finally turned professional at the end of 1989, winning his first pro tournament two years later on the Sunshine Tour (previously known as the Southern Africa Tour). Since then he has had numerous victories including the us open in both 1994 and 1997 and the British Open in 2002.
More highlights from Ernie’s career are listed below:
topping the 2003 and 2004 European Tour Order of Merit (money list),
winning the World Match Play Championship a record six times.
held the number one spot in the Official World Golf Rankings and has been consistently ranked in the top five.
He has been in the top ten for a total of 646 weeks.
In 2003 he was voted 37th on the SABC3’s Great South Africans.
He won the Sunshine Tour Order of Merit in the 1991/92 and 1994/95 seasons.
Ernie Els is one of the few golfers who is willing to participate in tournaments all around the world and you’ll regularly see in playing in the European Tour-sanctioned events in Asia, Australasia and his native country of South Africa.
Ernie is currently leading in the statistic of most consecutive cuts on the PGA Tour and the European Tour.
Ernie isn’t just tied to golf though, when he’s not playing he has a golf course design business, a charitable foundation which supports golf among underprivileged children in South Africa. Not so obviously, Ernie has a highly-regarded wine-making business.
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