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Ernie leads SA challenge

Miami - For all the recent talk of European domination of world golf, the South Africans aren't doing too badly either.

While Europe has six of the top eight players on the latest world rankings, much smaller South Africa is also punching above its weight, with seven golfers in the 69-man field for the World Golf Championships Cadillac Championship starting here on Thursday.

Defending champion Ernie Els is back of course, after last year holding off compatriot Charl Schwartzel for a 1-2 South African finish at Doral's Blue Monster.

It was anything but a flash in the pan for South African golf, as Louis Oosthuizen later showed by winning the British Open.

And just last week Rory Sabbatini won the Honda Classic on the PGA Tour.

In fact, if the International Presidents Cup team was selected now, the top five qualifiers would be South African: Els, Goosen, Tim Clark, Oosthuizen and Schwartzel.

But the Presidents Cup -- a biennial contest between the United States and a global team excluding Europe -- will not be played until November.

More immediately, there is the little matter of this week's $8.5 million event.

Schwartzel's performance here last year convinced him that he had the game to play on the PGA Tour, so he has taken up membership this year and will play at least half of his golf in the United States.

"I would love to have won last year but at the end of the day it was still a very good event," Schwartzel said Wednesday on tournament eve.

"It showed me I'm more than capable of playing against the guys out here.

"From now on I'm going to play quite a lot of events here in America, so I'm really excited about it. It's a new chapter in my career."

Schwartzel and Oosthuizen are renting a home in South Florida, not far from where Els lives in West Palm Beach.

As if they don't spend enough time together already, they will play the first two rounds here together, which, Schwartzel says, will be a first.

"We have played together the third and fourth rounds, but it's the first time in our professional careers we have been drawn together."

Actually, it wasn't a random draw, because officials are now using the human element to come up with groupings.

This week, for example, the top three world-ranked players are together for the first two rounds: German Martin Kaymer and Englishmen Lee Westwood and Luke Donald.

And Nos. 4-6 will also play together: US Open champion Graeme McDowell, along with Americans Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

Donald, who won the WGC Match Play title in Arizona just two weeks ago, has revealed that this week will mark his final tournament appearance before next month's Masters.

This is his fourth competitive week in a row, so he will have three weeks off after this to prepare for Augusta away from the tournament scene.

"Nothing against the events (I'm skipping)," Donald said, referring specifically to the Bay Hill (Orlando) and Houston US tour stops.

"You just go and play places you think you're going to be successful at, and I don't have the greatest confidence for those two events unfortunately. I will spend the time working on the game again."

However, nobody who's eligible is skipping this week's WGC event, which includes all 50 of the world's top players.

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