All the Gold Is on the Course : Golf: Not far out of bounds is incredible squalor in South Africa, where Bernhard Langer wins $1 million, with 50% skimmed off for taxes.

For 10 years now, golf’s annual Million Dollar Challenge at Sun City has easily been the best bet in the world--a 10-to-1 shot at $1 million without so much as risking an ante.

For a chance at that pot of gold, though, players have had to risk their reputations and sponsorships, temporarily forget their scruples and, from the moment they arrive, face one question over and over again: Why did they decide to ignore the worldwide sports boycott of South Africa?

They have given many different answers over the years, from the each-man-for-himself spirit of golf to the foolishness of mixing politics and sports. The truth, though, as plain-spoken Ken Green and a few other golfers have admitted in the past, is that there are a million reasons to play and each one begins with a dollar sign.

But this year, for the first time since the tournament was launched a decade ago, the Million Dollar Challenge concluded Sunday with a new legitimacy. Sort of.

The sports boycott of South Africa had been lifted, and the African National Congress had given its OK for the tournament. In exchange, sponsor Sun International agreed to donate an as-yet-unspecified amount of money to promote golf among the country’s underprivileged.

But not much really had changed in this sun-baked gambling resort. The 10,000 or so spectators each day still were overwhelmingly white, and the only blacks in evidence were serving food, raking traps or handing out soft drinks to the white golfers and white caddies.

Sun City still was sitting in the black homeland of Bophuthatswana, which was created by Pretoria’s apartheid policies. Bophuthatswana’s president, Lucas Mangope, was still in charge, celebrating his 14th anniversary of “independence” with Pretoria’s blessing, steadfastly refusing reincorporation into South Africa and keeping his political opponents safely behind bars, without trial.

Mangope’s government, as usual, skimmed off 50% of the winnings in taxes, leaving Bernhard Langer $500,000 for his winning effort. Langer’s four-day total of 272, 16 under par, gave him a five-stroke victory. American Mark Calcaveccia finished five strokes back, earning $300,000 before taxes.

Mark McNulty, of Zimbabwe, was 10 strokes off the lead, good enough for $250,000 and third place. He was followed by Nick Faldo, who earned $200,000; Fred Couples and South African John Bland, earning $145,000 each; and Ian Woosnam, with $130,000. The field was rounded out by PGA champion John Daly, whose six over par performance, which he blamed on jet lag, nevertheless was good for $110,000; Australian Steve Elkington, at 10-over, and South African David Frost, who finished last for a check of $100,000. All those earnings were before taxes.

For the first time in memory, though, the tournament drew criticism from the usually fawning local press.

Writing in the Sunday Times, the largest-circulation national newspaper in South Africa, columnist Edward Griffiths said the tournament may have had its place in the bygone era of sporting isolation, when it took a million dollars to lure the world’s top players to South Africa. But in the new political climate, the Million Dollar Challenge was simply “obscene,” he said.

Gary Player, the dean of South African golf and designer of the Sun City course, labeled Griffiths’ comments “Socialist rubbish.” Player argued that the tournament would draw tourists to South Africa, create jobs and “help show (the world) what this country is like.”

But, for many South Africans, the Million Dollar Challenge represents nothing more than the deep gap between the haves and the have-nots in South Africa. In Soweto, the black township of 2 million outside Johannesburg, for example, there is one private golf course. A public course was long ago settled by squatters in tin shacks, victims of housing policies that have created a 1 million-unit shortage of houses for blacks and a surplus for whites.

The black masses, who outnumber whites, 5-to-1, still are denied the caliber of sporting facilities available to whites. And the principle of charity, exemplified by the PGA Tour in the United States, has yet to find a home here.

Dan Retief, writing in South Africa’s weekly Financial Mail, noted last week that the difference between his country’s big-money tournaments and those in the United States is that, in South Africa, they still lack heart.

The Million Dollar Challenge and the Wild Coast Skins, played at a Sun resort in another nominally independent black homeland, “are held over lush courses alongside man-made Aladdin’s Caves that positively reek of money,” Retief wrote. “Yet not too far away, out of sight of the beautiful people, there is abject poverty, rural folk scratching out a bare living.”

That came as something of a surprise to the American golfers, who rarely manage a peek at the other South Africa. Calcaveccia, upon arriving for the Wild Coast Skins two weeks ago, startled local officials by innocently asking what charity would benefit from the big bucks up for grabs in the Skins. The answer was none.

Retief concluded that “one of the most distasteful aspects of our emergence from the cocoon of isolation is the amount of people who have suddenly discovered a new cow to milk.”

But the organizers of the Million Dollar Challenge have no plans to change.

“The way we have it now works well for us, and I feel we’ll keep it that way,” said Ken Rosevear, managing director of Sun International. And he talked excitedly of next year, when he hopes to lure Seve Ballesteros back to the Million Dollar. Ballesteros, who won the tournament in 1983 and 1984, has refused subsequent invitations because of concerns raised by his sponsors.