In close on three decades of reporting on New Zealand cricket, today's performance was the worst these eyes have witnessed.
There have been sessions, or partial sessions, down the years for which the eyes needed to be averted, even as recently as last season.
But this was a full six and a half hours in which everything went wrong. After the batting shambles, the bowling wasn't good enough, some of the fielding schoolboyish, and that's being unkind to the youngsters.
Certainly, South Africa's formidably strong, and complementary, quick bowlers, Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Morne Morkel, can, and have, made life difficult for the best batting lineups.
In rolling New Zealand for their third worst test total, and the lowest in the last 38 years of test cricket, they turned the visitors' batting to spinach.