Golf Vic Vol 60 No 1

Photography: Paul Shire “If I can’t get five or six of the top 20 players down here next year, I haven’t done my job.” Player, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Ben Crenshaw and Curtis Strange didn’t exactly hurt Charlton’s cause either. The world has long moved on from those exciting days. We can watch the best players every week on television. The European Tour has gone from a six-month schedule restricted by the weather to a twelve-month world tour. The prizemoney in the United States has reached levels unimaginable to those who played decades ago and fewer Americans find the need to extend their golfing experiences beyond their own shores. When they do, the appearance fees are beyond silly. And why would you play in Australia when Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are handing out seemingly unlimited amounts of cash for their early season events? The Vic Open is never going to attract four of the five leading players in the world as Saudi Arabia did the previous week, but its format means it doesn’t need to. Spectators walking the fairways (some even with well-behaved dogs), enabling them to watch golf ‘from behind’ as it should be watched, is just one element making the event bigger than the players playing it. Obviously the mixed format is the most important element but the support of a region delighted in seeing professional golf cannot be underestimated. Would it be so successful in Melbourne without a huge name to attract the marginal spectator? Is it better to eschew the payment of fees, increase the prizemoney over time and rely on the players to come to an event with an increasing reputation for good fun, great atmosphere and played on one of the best courses either the European Tour or the LPGA see all season? I caddied for Christina Kim and she said at the end of the week, “If I can’t get five or six of the top 20 players down here next year, I haven’t done my job.” Kim is a throwback to the days of Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Peter Thomson when the caddy’s job was to turn up sober, know the rules and keep well away from the handing out of gratuitous advice. She makes all her own decisions “because I know my game better than anybody and only I know how I want to hit a shot.” Increasingly in the era post-Nicklaus and Thomson, players and caddies have evolved – or devolved – to a point where seemingly everything is a discussion and a joint decision. There are some great caddies out there with good instincts as to the right club and the right shot and there is nothing wrong with the modern way. But it’s a revelation to see a totally self- reliant player making all her own choices and I wonder if it isn’t a better way to play. Thomson, in his wonderful book A Life in Golf , said, “Occasionally I’d say to Jackie (Jackie Leigh, his English caddy), ‘I think I’ll hit a four iron here, Jackie,’ and he’d just say ‘good’.” Thomson was always amazed that Sam Snead would ask his caddy what club to use – and then if it was wrong, he’d blame the caddy. “He was the best player in the world and here he was asking a caddy what to do. I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Thomson told me many years ago. Mind you, there was one time Christina could have done with a little guidance. In the practice round we had determined the right line off the eighth hole was just left of a Norfolk Island pine far in the distance. On Saturday the wind had switched and she decided she would go to the right of the tree. I thought it a somewhat surprising decision but kept my mouth shut and her beautiful drive finished 15 yards into the junk on the right. As we walked around the corner of the dogleg and it became apparent her ball was in the rocky wasteland, she said, “Oh no, I’ve got this hole mixed up with the 14th!” Then the next morning she inexplicably swapped her driver for a three-wood off the first tee. Cresting the hill and seeing her ball 40 yards behind her playing partners and 170 yards from the pin, it was “I’ve done it again – I’ve got this mixed up with the (much shorter) 10th!” Hopefully next year she will have it sorted and she can convince more of the better players to head to Barwon Heads and what is one of the most interesting tournaments in the game, and one sure to only get even better. Golf Victoria 15