Golf Vic Vol 60 No 1

Photography: Simon O’Dwyer They are members at both Heywood and Portland and while Noah is yet to win a club championship, he took multiple winner Barry Wilson to the fifth extra hole in a quarter-final of the Portland championship last year. For the Bryden girls, netball was their favourite sport until their dad Darren suggested they give golf a try. Well, more than suggested. “He sort of made us get into it,” Rebecca said, laughing. “But after a while we really started to enjoy it.” Under the tutelege of golf teachers such as Paul Smith at Port Fairy, Greg Davis at Mt Gambier, and South West Academy of Sport coach Brook Salmon, both Rebecca and Georgia now are firmly entrenched in the lower handicap echelons. Younger sister Lindsay also took to the game but while she enjoys having a hit with her family members and friends, she is not as passionate about it as her older siblings. It was only natural that the Bryden and McLeod kids would hook up and in the past six or seven years, as well as playing individual events they have teamed together in tournaments across the south- west and also at state level. Both Rebecca and Georgia have won the girls’ nett section of the Victorian Secondary Schools Championship and Jayden has been runner-up in the boys’ nett section. And when she was just 14, Georgia played multiple championship winner Wendy Ryan in the final of the Heywood club championship, taking her far more experienced rival the full distance to lose on the 36th hole. In another fine performance, all four represented Heywood District Secondary College to win the Greater Western Region final of School Sports Victoria’s golf championship, and Rebecca and Noah are past winners of Heywood’s mixed foursomes championship. Incidentally, the flag won at the Greater Western Region final, the only golf flag the school has ever won, cannot be found hanging among the other sporting flags that have been won by Heywood College. “No-one knows where it is,” Noah said. It’s a sad reflection of the fact that the school and, more importantly, the students have little or no interest in golf, something that frustrates the quartet, particularly the two girls. Their mum Lynne pointed out that the girls had mentors to help them develop in the game, among them Portland’s Barb Bibby and the late Anne Learmonth from Port Fairy, and that they in turn were keen to help others. “But it is very hard; there just seems to be no interest down here.” Rebecca spent time working with Golf Victoria’s Tony Collier, doing clinics at schools in the area as well as doing them on her own. “It was my dream as a kid to do what Tony does,” she said. “But it never happened.” Now 20, she works in Hamilton as a hairdresser but still loves the game. OOD FOUR Golf Victoria 39