About SAFLII
Databases
Search
Terms of Use
RSS Feeds
South Africa: Supreme Court of Appeal
SAFLII
>>
Databases
>>
South Africa: Supreme Court of Appeal
>>
1993
>>
[1993] ZASCA 163
|
|
Steyn v LSA Motors Ltd. (207/1992) [1993] ZASCA 163; 1994 (1) SA 49 (AD); [1994] 1 All SA 483 (A) (30 September 1993)
LL
Case No 207/1992
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF SOUTH AFRICA APPELLATE DIVISION
In the matter between:
ARCHIBALD DOUW STEYN
Appellant
and
LSA MOTORS LIMITED
Respondent
CORAM
: BOTHA, HEFER, VIVIER, EKSTEEN JJA
et
KRIEGLER AJA
HEARD
: 3 SEPTEMBER
1993
DELIVERED
: 30 SEPTEMBER 1993
JUDGMENT
BOTHA JA
:-
2
A hole in one is the cause of this litigation. The feat was achieved by the
appellant, an amateur golfer with a low handicap, at the
17th hole of the
Durbanville Golf Club, on Saturday 9 December 1989. He was taking part in a
championship which was called the Helios
Minolta Durbanville Open, after the
sponsors of the tournament. The competition was one in which both professional
and amateur players
participated, commonly known as a "pro-am" event. Next to
the 17th green there was on display a brand new 5 speed 2 litre Opel GSI
motor
car together with a board proclaiming:
"Hole in one prize sponsored by Reeds
Delta."
Reeds Delta is the trade name of the
respondent. The appellant claimed the car. The respondent refused to deliver, on
the ground that
only professional players qualified for the prize.
3
The appellant brought an action in the Cape Provincial Division for delivery
of the car or payment of its value, being R50 000. The
respondent defended. The
trial Judge (SCOTT J) dismissed the action with costs. The appellant appeals
with leave granted pursuant
to a petition to the Chief Justice.
The
appellant's claim is founded in contract. The pleadings need not be analysed;
they tend to obfuscate rather than clarify the true
issues in the case as they
emerged in evidence and in argument, both in the Court
a quo
and in this
Court. In essence the appellant's case is this: the board at the 17th green was
an offer by the respondent of the motor
car as a prize for a hole in one; the
offer was addressed to all the players in the competition; any player could
accept the offer
by scoring a hole in one; the appellant, by doing so, accepted
the offer; and thus a binding contract was brought
4 into being. The respondent's defence is as follows: the board was not an
offer, but a statement advertising an offer previously
made; that offer
was
limited to professional players only; the appellant, being an amateur,
was not entitled to accept it; and consequently there was no
contract.
An
amateur golfer is "one who plays the game as a non-remunerative or
non-profit-making sport". This definition one finds in the "Rules
of Amateur
Status as approved by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews". A copy of
a document bearing that title (1987 edition)
was put in as evidence by consent
at the trial. In terms of the minute of a pre-trial conference it was common
cause that the appellant
as an amateur golfer was subject to the Rules. The
definition I have quoted appears in the preamble to the Rules. Rule 1 deals with
the forfeiture of amateur status and Rule 2 with the
5
procedure for enforcement and reinstatement. In both
instances the provisions are detailed and lengthy.
For present purposes we
are concerned only with the
opening part and clause 4(a) of Rule 1. They read
as
follows:
RULE 1
Forfeiture of amateur status at any age.
The following are examples of acts which are contrary to the Definition of an
Amateur Golfer and cause forfeiture of Amateur
Status:
4.
Prizes and Testimonials
(a) Acceptance of
a prize or prize voucher of retail value exceeding as follows:
In G B
& I Elsewhere
For an event of £170 $400 US or
more than 2 the
rounds equivalent
For an event of 2110 $260 US or
2 rounds or the
less equivalent
or such lesser figure, if any, as may be decided by the
Governing Body of
...golf in any country."
6
It is common cause that in this country the equivalent amount which was
operative for the purposes of clause 4(a) at the relevant
time was R600 (or
thereabouts).
In evidence the appellant acknowledged that he was aware of the
rules relating to his amateur status; he knew that if he played a
hole in one at
the 17th he could not claim the car without forfeiting his amateur status. His
stance was that there was nothing in
the rules to prevent him from claiming the
car and taking delivery of it, as long as he was prepared to forfeit his amateur
status
by taking the prize; and he testified that he was content to suffer such
forfeiture for the sake of getting the car. This had been
his attitude, he said,
even at the time when he played his shot at the 17th. He explained that he had
been alerted to the possibility
of winning the prize a week before the
7
tournament, when he read a report about it in a newspaper. At that time he
had already entered for the competition; he had done so
as a result of seeing a
notice advertising the event and inviting entries which had been posted up at
the Porterville Golf Club,
of which he was a member. In that notice it was said
that the competition carried prizes worth more than R30 000, but no mention
was
made of a prize for a hole in one. The press report which he saw did, however,
mention that an Opel motor car worth R52 000 was
on offer as a prize for a hole
in one at the 17th, and it did so in unqualified terms, i e without any
intimation that the prize
would be available to professional players only.
Having read the report he concluded that as an amateur competitor he also
qualified
for the chance of winning the prize.
On the day of the event
announcements were made over loudspeakers at the clubhouse, particularly
8
in the initial stages when competitors were being called upon to tee off at
the appointed times. The appellant testified that no announcements
were made
relating to the prize for a hole in one at the 17th, and he called three other
amateur players as witnesses to depose to
the same effect. The appellant said
that on his first round around the course (this was a 36 hole strokeplay
championship) he observed
the car and the board at the 17th green. There was
then a discussion between him and his wife, who was his caddy for the day, about
the fact that the board did not limit the prize to professionals. The
unqualified wording of the legend on the board confirmed his
belief, the
appellant said, that he would be entitled to claim the prize if he achieved a
hole in one. That was his state of mind
when he again reached the 17th hole on
his second round and when he struck his lucky shot. He was surprised and
9
disappointed, he says, when he was told at the subsequent prize-giving
ceremony that his amateur status disqualified him from taking
the prize.
In
cross-examination it emerged that the appellant had not taken part in a "pro-am"
competition before, although he was a golfer with
considerable experience. He
had taken part in a large number of amateur tournaments and had assisted in the
organization of such
tournaments at his Club in Porterville. He admitted that he
had never competed for any prize in excess of the R600 limit laid down
by the
rules relating to amateur status, and that in the competitions which he had
helped to organize the prizes had always been
fixed below that limit. He claimed
to have had knowledge of one instance where "a blind eye was turned" on amateurs
receiving "gifts"
worth more than the permitted limit, and of another where a
car had been offered as a prize to
10 both professionals and amateurs, but on
further enquiry it transpired that this was purely hearsay information acquired
by him
subsequent to the event in question here. Regarding the prize money of
R30 000 which had been mentioned in the notice advertising
the event, he
conceded that no amateur would have been entitled to claim a share in it in
excess of the prescribed limit, even if
he had made the best score of the day,
and even though the notice did not differentiate in this respect between
professionals and
amateurs. In response to an invitation to explain the
difference between that kind of prize money and the prize of a motor car, he
said that in the former case the prizes related to the best scores for the
tournament as a whole, and that they had already been
allocated to professionals
and amateurs separately before the commencement of the competition, whereas in
the latter case the prize
11
was a "one-off" affair related to one shot at one hole, which entitled an
amateur to claim it if he were prepared to sacrifice his
amateur status.
Concerning the announcements at the commencement of play he said that he had not
listened to them with particular
care, even though he knew that such
announcements often related to local rules or rules of the day that would apply
in the particular
tournament. He admitted that he could have made enquiries,
before he teed off, from the officials in charge of organizing the tournament,
as to exactly what prizes were available to be won by the amateur competitors,
both generally and specifically in relation to the
motor car on offer at the
17th hole.
I turn to the other side of the story. It was told by a director of the
respondent company, Mr Smal, who was also the vice-chairman
of the Durban-ville
Golf Club at the relevant time. His evidence
12
may be summarized as follows. Some time before the event he was approached by
a representative of the sponsors of the tournament (Helios
Minolta) with a
proposal that the respondent provide an additional attraction for the tournament
in the form of sponsoring a motor
car as a prize for a hole in one, with a view
to attracting more professional players to take part. After consideration Smal
agreed
to the proposal, on behalf of the respondent, and in doing so he
stipulated that the prize would be available only to professional
players. He
then instructed the respondent's insurance brokers to procure insurance covering
the respondent against the risk of any
of the professional participants in the
competition scoring a hole in one at the 17th. The insurance was duly effected
and the respondent
received a cover note issued on behalf of the insurance
companies which jointly assumed the risk. By that time it was
13
known that 15 professional players had entered for the tournament, and the
cover note in express terms limited the risk insured against
to any one of those
players scoring a hole in one.
Smal testified that no golf club is allowed
under any circumstances to offer prizes to amateur players which exceeded the
limit of
a few hundred rand specified in the rules relating to amateur status.
He knew this to be the case because of his long association
with the Durbanville
Golf Club. The Club is affiliated to the Western Province Golf Union, the
constitution of which provides that
any affiliated club is liable to suspension
or forfeiture of its affiliation if it holds any competition, or allows any
competition
to be held on its course, the conditions of which are in breach of
the rules of amateur status. Smal knew from personal experience
that the
governing body insisted on compliance with
14 the rules and he would not, he
said, have done anything which could have placed his Club's continued
affiliation in jeopardy. He
had read press reports before the event in which it
had not been stated that the prize for a hole in one was limited to
professionals,
but this did not trouble him, because he knew that the reports
had not emanated from the respondent and that its agreement with the
main
sponsors was that only professionals would qualify for the prize (in fact the
press reports had resulted from a press release
issued by Helios Minolta); and,
in addition, he expected every amateur player with a reasonable handicap to be
conversant with the
rules.
With regard to the board which was on display with
the car on the 17 th green, Smal said that he had been responsible for the
wording
of the legend on it. He had not considered it necessary to add words to
the message, indicating that only pro-
15 fessional players qualified for the
prize, because he believed that the board was merely an advertisement
publicizing the fact
that the respondent had sponsored the prize. From the point
of view of the respondent as a business concern beneficial publicity
was the
whole object of the exercise. Smal's view was that the respondent's offer of the
prize had been made prior to the event,
and that it had been made to the main
sponsors, Helios Minolta, when the respondent accepted their proposal to sponsor
the car as
an additional prize. Smal stressed that at the time he had made it
clear, on behalf of the respondent, that the respondent's offer
was subject to
the condition that only professional players would qualify for the prize. On the
day of the event, Smal thought, there
was nothing further to be done by the
respondent in connection with the making of any offer, because, as he put it,
"die dag. was
nie ons s'n nie". He added,
16 however, that the respondent did
see to it that the announcements which were made before the commencement of play
and during the
period of the initial tee offs, in so far as they related to
prizes, specified that the prize of a motor car at the 17th was for
the first
professional to score a hole in one. To confirm this the respondent called as a
witness the man who made the announcements,
Mr Venter. He was an employee of the
respondent who worked under Smal, but he acted as announcer at the request of
the Club, of which
he was a member. He knew that the respondent had confined its
offer of the prize, as well as the insurance cover obtained in respect
of it, to
professional players. His evidence was that in between calling up players to tee
off he from time to time made announcements
relating to the main sponsors and to
the respondent's sponsorship of the prize for a hole in one, for purposes of
publicity and prestige.
17
He said that in every reference to the prize for a hole in one he
specifically mentioned that only professional competitors qualified
for it. He
remained adamant on this point, despite challenging cross-examination.
The
above survey of the evidence reveals only one conflict of fact arising from
directly contradictory evidence, viz whether it was
said in the announcements
over the public address system that the prize for a hole in one on the 17th was
for professionals only.
This issue can be disposed of briefly. In dealing with
the evidence on this point in his judgment the trial Judge observed that the
appellant and his witnesses, on their own evidence, were practising their
chipping and putting while waiting to tee off, and that
it was not unlikely that
their attention was directed to what they were doing rather than the public
announcements which must have
18
been almost continuous as the players were being called to tee off. On the
other hand Venter had good reason, as he explained in his
evidence, for making
it clear in his announcements that the prize at the 17 th hole was open only to
professionals. Accordingly the
trial Judge resolved the issue by accepting that
such announcements were made but were not heard by the appellant. Counsel for
the
appellant sought belatedly to argue that the trial Judge had erred in
accepting Venter's evidence. The argument is wholly without
merit. On the record
there is no reason to doubt the truth of Venter's evidence, while the evidence
of the appellant and his witnesses
on this particular point discloses a number
of unsatisfactory features. I do not propose to go into the details. It suffices
to say
that no grounds have been shown for differing from the trial Judge's
acceptance of Venter's evidence. Counsel for the respondent
did
19
not seek to challenge the trial Judge's acceptance of the appellant's
evidence that he had not heard the announcements.
The major divergences in
the evidence of the two protagonists, the appellant and Smal, relate to the
subjective perceptions and intention
of each of them in regard to objective
facts which are not in dispute. Each could only testify to his own state of
mind; neither
could directly challenge the evidence of the other. But it is
still necessary, of course, to consider whether the evidence of each
of them is
acceptable. For convenience, I take Smal's evidence first. The gist of it was
that he, representing the respondent, never
intended to make an offer to the
appellant at all. The trial Judge found that the probabilities favoured the
conclusion that as far
as the respondent was concerned the prize which it had
sponsored was available only to professional players,
20
and that the respondent's refusal to deliver the motor car to the appellant
was in good faith and not merely an attempt to renege
on an undertaking it had
given. The correctness of this finding is not open to doubt. Indeed, counsel for
the appellant in argument
before this Court (as in the Court
a quo
) did
not dispute that the respondent had intended its offer of a prize to be limited
to professional golfers only.
Turning to the evidence of the appellant, the
gist of it was that he believed that he could claim the car if he played a hole
in one.
It is implicit in his evidence that he regarded the board at the 17 th
hole as an offer of a prize by the respondent to all the players
taking part in
the competition and that he believed that the offer was open to be accepted by
him. The trial Judge did not comment
on this evidence in his judgment,
except
21 perhaps obliquely to the extent of remarking, with reference to the
appellant's avowed disappointment at being told at the prize-giving
ceremony
that he had not qualified for the prize, that "his disappointment is
understandable". However, the appellant's evidence
on the record is not without
blemish. In particular there are passages in it suggesting, perhaps even
strongly, that the idea of
claiming the car by forfeiting his amateur status had
first occurred to him only after he had played the fluke at the 17th hole.
It
appears, for instance, that after the shot had been played he was advised by an
offi-cial and by some of the other amateur players:
"Turn pro and claim the
car"; that he had not asserted a right to claim the prize until days after the
event; and that he had approached
Smal after the prize-giving ceremony with a
tentative enquiry as to whether it would be possible for him to obtain the
22
car if he was prepared to relinquish his amateur status. I do not propose,
however, to pursue the question whether the appellant's
evidence about his state
of mind is acceptable. It would be invidious to do so in the absence of any
finding by the trial Judge as
to the demeanour of the appellant when testifying
or the impression created by him as a witness; counsel for the respondent did
not
argue that the appellant's evidence should have been rejected by the Court
a quo
or was to be rejected by this Court; and it is not necessary to
come to a conclusion on the question for the purposes of deciding
the appeal, as
will appear presently. In the circumstances I shall simply assume, in what
follows, that the appellant's evidence
as to his state of mind and his intention
at the relevant time is credible and acceptable. On this footing the appellant's
intention
23
was to accept what he believed to be an offer by the respondent to him, while
the respondent through Smal had no intention of making
any offer to the
appellant. The minds of the parties never met; there was not
consensus
,
but
dissensus
. The whole thrust of the argument for the appellant was in
effect to brush this plain truth aside by simply fastening onto the wording
on
the board at the 17th hole: whatever Smal's subjective intention was, it was
urged, the wording on the board conveyed an offer
to all the players that any
one of them, professional or amateur, who scored a hole in one qualified for the
prize; it constituted
an offer in unqualified terms of a reward in the classic
mould of cases such as
Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co
[1893] 1 QB 256
and
Bloom v The American Swiss Watch Company
1915 AD 100
; and the
respondent could not be heard to say that its offer of a prize, was available
only to the pro-
24
fessional players taking part in the competition. The argument is
fundamentally fallacious inasmuch as it treats Smal's subjective
intention as
irrelevant and postulates the outward manifestation of his intention as the sole
and conclusive touchstone of the respondent's
contractual liability. That is
contrary to legal principle. Where it is shown that the offeror's true intention
differed from his
expressed intention, the outward appearance of agreement
flowing from the offeree's acceptance of the offer as it stands does not
in
itself or necessarily result in contractual liability. Nor is it in itself
decisive that the offeree accepted the offer in reliance
upon the offeror's
implicit representation that the offer correctly reflected his intention.
Remaining for consideration is the further
and crucial question whether a
reasonable man in the position of the offeree would have accepted the offer
25
in the belief that it represented the true intention
of the offeror, in
accordance with the objective
criterion formulated long ago in the classic
dictum
of BLACKBURN J in
Smith v Hughes
[1871] LR 6 QB 597
at 607.
Only if this test is satisfied can the
offeror be held contractually
liable.
There is no need to canvass authorities in
support of the view just stated. In the recent case
of
Sonap Petroleum
(SA) (Pty) Ltd (formerly known as
Sonarep (SA) (Pty) Ltd) v Pappadoqianis
1992 (3) SA
234 (A) HARMS AJA considered the leading cases and
the opinions of academic authors on the topic (at
238I-241D) and stated his conclusion as follows (at
239I-240B):
"In my view, therefore, the decisive ques
tion in a case like the present
is this:
did the party whose actual intention did
not conform to the
common intention ex
pressed, lead the other party, as a reason
able man,
to believe that his declared
intention represented his actual intention? To
answer this question, a three-fold
26
enquiry is usually necessary, namely, firstly, was there a misrepresentation as
to one party's intention; secondly, who made that
representation; and thirdly,
was
the other party misled thereby? The
last question postulates two possibilities: Was he actually misled and would a
reasonable man have been misled?"
In that case the
Court was concerned with
dissensus
relating to the terms of the
contract proposed in the
offer, but the test whether a reasonable man in
the
position of the one party would have been misled
applies also where it
is shown that the other party's
declaration was not intended by him to be an
offer at
all. This is exemplified by the facts and the
decision in
Spes Bona Bank Ltd v Portals Water
Treatment South Africa (Pty) Ltd
1983 (1) SA 978
(A)
- see especially at 984D-985H. And in my view it
must apply equally when
the
dissensus
relates to the
addressee of the offer, i e where the offeror does
not intend the offer to be open for acceptance by the
27
other party, but the latter believes that it is and in that belief accepts
it.
In the present case Smal did not intend the
message on the board at the
17th hole to be an offer; nor did he intend the respondent's offer of a prize
for a hole in one on the
17th to be open for acceptance by any amateur player
such as the appellant. The appellant (on the assumption made earlier) believed
that the message on the board was an offer and that it was open to him to accept
it. The
dissensus
between the parties thus relates to both the offer and
its addressees. Notionally the two aspects of
dissensus
are discrete, and
logically the second can arise for consideration only if the issue in respect of
the first is resolved in favour
of the appellant. They were argued separately.
So, there was much debate in argument as to whether the words on the board,
objectively
speaking, and having regard
28
to the surrounding circumstances, constituted an offer or a mere
advertisement of an offer previously made. I do not, however, consider
it to be
a profitable exercise to pursue the question thus formulated as a separate
issue, nor to dissect the
dissensus
in this case into its two aspects and
to deal with these separately. The decisive question is this: would a reasonable
man in the
position of the appellant have considered the words on the board to
be an offer which it was open to him to accept? Posed in this
way the question
rolls the two aspects of
dissensus
into one enquiry, but I can see no
objection in principle to dealing with the particular facts of this case in this
fashion. It is
certainly the most convenient way of resolving the fundamental
issue in the case, and it is on this basis that I proceed to consider
the
facts.
To answer the question I have posed I shall
29 examine the appellant's conduct and test it against the objective
criterion of reasonableness.
It will be recalled that the appellant
first became aware of the offer of a prize for a hole in one when he read a
report about it in a newspaper and noticed that the prize
was not stated in the
report to be available only to professional golfers. His evidence was that he
concluded that as an amateur
competitor he also qualified for a chance of
winning the prize. In my opinion there can be no doubt that the appellant was
unreasonable
in coming to that conclusion simply on the strength of the
newspaper report. The report, as the appellant admitted in cross-examination,
was no more than an ordinary reporter's comment contained in the sporting
columns of the paper and it did not disclose the reporter's
source of
information. Moreover, and more importantly, the report also mentioned the prize
money put
30
up by the sponsors of the event, without stating that
it would only be available to the professional
competitors. The appellant, as we have seen, knew
full well when he saw in the notice advertising the
event that prize money of R30 000 was offered by the
sponsors, that he could not qualify for those prizes
(at least not in excess of the prescribed limit).
The report could not have caused him to think that
the prize for a hole in one stood on a different
footing. It could not reasonably have induced in his
mind a belief that
the sponsors of the motor car
intended to put up that prize for amateurs as well as
professionals. Of
course, since the report did not
emanate from the respondent, it was in any event no
representation by the respondent as to its intention.
But I have discussed
the appellant's reaction to it
in order to show that his belief as deposed to by him
was wholly
unwarranted and unreasonable at its very
31 inception.
Accordingly, when the appellant arrived at
the course on
the day of the event, he had no real
ground for believing that he could
qualify for the prize of the motor car. But he did nothing to find out what his
position was. He
paid no particular attention to the announcements over the
public address system, although he knew that they frequently related to
the
rules of play for the day. Had he taken care to listen, he would have heard
Venter's statements that only professionals qualified
for the hole in one prize.
He made no enquiries, although he knew that officials of the Club, who were in
charge of organizing the
event, were readily available to answer any query about
the prizes on offer in the tournament. So, when he set off on his first round
he
still had no valid reason for believing that he could qualify for the prize. And
at that stage he
32
had no reason to think that any further information would be
forthcoming along the course.
The next and crucial stage in the enquiry
is
the appellant's arrival at the 17th hole on his
first round. His evidence, it
will be recalled, was
that he read the words on the board at the green,
saw
that the words did not limit the prize to the pro
fessional players,
and discussed the matter with his
wife. His belief was confirmed that he
could claim
the prize if he succeeded in playing a hole in one.
The fact
that his existing belief, which he says was
confirmed, had been baseless,
must necessarily have a
negative impact on the assessment of the
reasonable
ness of the confirmation that he found in the words
on the
board. But for convenience I shall leave that
consideration out of account in
the further examina
tion of the appellant's mental reaction to the
message
on" the board.
33
That reaction must be tested against the background of the appellant's
experience as a competitive amateur golfer. He knew the provisions
of the rules
relating to amateur status. He knew that when clubs organized competitions for
amateurs the prizes were invariably fixed
at a level of value below the limit
prescribed by the rules. By necessary inference from his evidence he had had no
experience or
knowledge prior to the event in question of any instance where the
rules had been breached. In regard to the hearsay information
he obtained after
the event, he himself regarded the one instance to which he referred as a case
where "a blind eye was turned" to
a moderate transgression of the prescribed
limitation on the value of prizes. The fact that he had not previously
participated in
a "pro-am" competition should have placed him on his -guard in
considering his position as an amateur in
34 relation to the prizes on offer.
He knew that the Durbanville Golf Club had organized and was in control of the
competition and
that the role of the sponsors of the prizes was no more than to
finance the prizes for the promotion of the prestige of the event
and of
beneficial publicity for themselves. He must have known that the allocation of
the prizes and any conditions attached thereto
had been negotiated between the
Club and the sponsors before the commencement of the event. As a reasonable man
he should have realised
that the prizes on offer were not simply a matter
between the competitors and the sponsors, but that the Club had a vital interest
in the matter as well.
Against this background there can be no doubt, in my
judgment, that the appellant acted unreasonably in regarding the wording on the
board at the 17th hole as an offer by the respondent which
35
was open to him, as an amateur competitor, to accept. Two aspects, in
particular, of his evidence demonstrate the unreasonableness
of his subjective
belief. The first is his inability to provide a sensible explanation for the
distinction which he drew in his mind
between the R30 000 prize money sponsored
by the main sponsors and the motor car sponsored by the respondent. He was
compelled to
acknowledge that he could not have claimed the first prize for the
best overall score of the day if he had achieved it, even if he
were prepared to
sacrifice his amateur status. The reason is obvious: no one could have believed
that an amateur player qualified
for that prize. And the reasons why no one
could have believed that must surely apply also to the prize of a motor car for
a hole
in one. The appellant's attempts to differentiate between the two
situations, as described earlier, are too irrational to bear scrutiny.
36
Accordingly it was manifestly unreasonable for the appellant to conclude,
from the mere fact that the wording on the board did not
expressly limit the
prize to be won to the professional players, that it was an offer addressed to
the amateur players as well.
The second aspect of the appellant's evidence relates to his avowed
preparedness to sacrifice his amateur status for the sake of winning
the prize.
The appellant spoke so glibly of giving up his amateur status that it conjures
up the picture of a man discarding an old
worn-out jacket for which he has no
further use. But of course the forfeiture by an amateur golfer of his status as
such is a matter
of much greater gravity than that. The appellant's attitude may
have been in conformity with the letter of the Rules of the Royal
and Ancient,
but I have no doubt that it flies in the face of the spirit of
37 those
Rules. The point of these observations is not to criticize the appellant for his
attitude. I am concerned with the enquiry
whether the appellant's belief that
the respondent was extending an offer of a prize to him as an amateur was
reasonable. The point,
then, is this: was it reasonable to believe that the
respondent intended to create an opportunity for an amateur player to collect
the prize of a car by forfeiting his amateur status? The answer, in my judgment,
is clear. The appellant may have been prepared to
brush aside the dichotomy
between professional and amateur players which pervades the golfing world, but
he had no reason to deduce
from the wording on the board at the 17th hole that
the respondent's intention was the same.
In the final result my conclusion is
that a reasonable man in the position of the appellant would not have believed
that the respondent
intended the
38
board at the 17th hole to constitute an offer by the respondent which was
open for acceptance by the appellant. It follows that the
Court
a quo
's
dismissal of the appellant's action was correct. The appeal is dismissed with
costs.
A S BOTHA JA
HEFER JA
VIVIER JA
CONCUR
EKSTEEN JA
KRIEGLER AJA