Witnesses have seen the car “whizzing” to and from Els’s wine estate near Stellenbosch in the Cape Winelands.

The top sportsman told the April issue of Golf Digest: “I just shipped a Ferrari 612 Scaglietti to South Africa, where you can really bomb it. They know me pretty well, so I can talk myself out of a fine there.”

No so fast, said Solly Malatsi, spokesman for the ministry of transport in the Western Cape. “I can assure you that in the Western Cape there is no chance that a prominent Mr so-and-so driving a fancy car will get let off the hook,” he said.