A NEW SPORTING and recreation event facility has been created in Port Elizabeth through a consortium consisting of the University of Port Elizabeth, the Humewood Links golf club and the Madiba Bay Safari World. Madiba Bay Sport World combines the existing strengths of the top lecturers, coaches, nutrition experts and facilities that include sports fields and conference centres at the university and Humewood, which is one of South Africa’s top ten golf courses. The Sport World will become the seventh node of a planned Madiba Bay tourist development, which runs behind the university grounds. Other planned nodes are Madiba Bay City Escape, the Madiba Bay Lion World, the Madiba Bay “Big Five”, Madiba Bay Agri World, Madiba Bay Edu World and Madiba Bay Sea World. “With one of the top links golf courses in the world on our doorstep, plus top sport units, we are all asking ourselves why we didn’t do this earlier,” said Madiba Bay’s Johann Dreyer. “Apart from being neighbours, together we have great synergy and a highly marketable product. Golf is the first sport we will tackle jointly.” Sports World will offer budding youngsters with good academic and sporting track records a chance for all-round development. General Manager of the Humewood Golf Course, Garth Webster, believes that the Sports World is “a magnificent move in the right direction”. He has visions that South Africa’s own Tiger Woods will emerge from the Summerstrand facilities. Potential elite golfers could spend time refining their game with coaches while soaking up other skills related to golf – physical and mental fitness, nutrition, video analysis of the player, support programmes, life skill activities, how to handle competitive players and the media.