Golf Vic Vol 60 No 3 2019

In this, the 60th anniversary of the first publication of this magazine, it’s perhaps worthwhile considering some memories of Victorian golf from the time I first took the game up as a caddy at Eastern in the middle of 1969. Tony Jacklin had just beaten Bob Charles at Lytham to win the British Open and Peter Thomson, Bruce Devlin and Bruce Crampton were our best players. Bob Stanton was on the cusp of being Greg Norman before Norman had even started playing golf. We played with the small ‘British’ ball and the Big Three – Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus – came to play our biggest events with regularity. They played with locally made Slazenger clubs at a time when Australian companies were making some of the best clubs in the world. Tom Crow was working for PGF (before going to America and starting Cobra) which also made the most beautiful leather golf bags. Kids caddied at clubs without anyone worrying about them being covered by OH&S. Graphite was for pencils but 50 years on juniors have no clue woods were once shafted with steel. For any golf-loving teenager living in Melbourne, the coming of a big professional event was a time for celebration because it was the only time we saw professional golfers swing and play. Watching Gary Player win the 1970 Australian Open at Kingston Heath was simply amazing. He even spoke to me on the edge of the second tee. ‘Are you boys enjoying the golf?’ He was playing with Frank Phillips who, to our astonishment, four putted the second green and was no doubt enjoying it a lot less after that. There was no televised overseas golf aside from the odd Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf or made-for-TV celebrity event narrated by Peter Alliss or Henry Longhurst. Fifty years ago the Victorian Open was played at Riversdale. The fifth hole was still a par five and the up-and-coming star David Graham beat the Riversdale specialist, the great amateur Kevin Hartley. The state Open always seemed to be an important tournament but it went to a new level when Tony Charlton undertook a mission to breathe new life into the 1972 tournament at Commonwealth. Isao Aoki played but it was a time before he was even remotely famous outside of Japan and an attraction was the long-hitting Adonis, George Bell, an amateur from New South Wales. George’s problem was Commonwealth’s fairways were so narrow he mostly played it with a two-iron on his way to missing the cut. The New Zealander Walter Godfrey won and I remember being close enough to the action to hear Kel Nagle’s caddy say to a friend as Godfrey, dressed very stylishly in all red, stood over a five-footer for a birdie on the 13th green, ‘We’ve got a chance if he misses this.’ He didn’t and that was it. By 1972, Michael Cahill was the best young amateur and in the midst of winning three consecutive Victorian Amateur Championships. There was no strokeplay qualifier, rather a somewhat random 128 draw and to win 21 straight matches took some great golf and no doubt a little luck. Cahill turned pro just before the PGA changed the rules to allow amateurs deemed good enough to simply apply to the PGA based on their amateur record. Terry Gale and Noel Ratcliffe had played in the Eisenhower Cup with Cahill in 1974 and used the new rules to enter the pro ranks. Cahill entered the 1976 Australian PGA at Rosebud Country Club, taking his place in the field alongside Ratcliffe and Gale, shooting 69 and leading the opening round. When he arrived at the course on Friday, PGA officials informed him they had mistakenly accepted his entry and he was therefore disqualified. Imagine trying that now. The next year at Yarra Yarra he was properly eligible and duly won, beating, amongst others, a young Greg Norman. Charlton brought Johnny Miller to the Vic Open in 1977 and in subsequent years Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Curtis Strange, Craig Stadler, Ben Crenshaw and Lee Trevino made it one of the best tournaments in the country. Ironically, none of them managed to win, something of a feather in the cap for the locals. The PGA Championship too flourished at Royal Melbourne for five years from 1978 before the sponsor pulled out and it’s never been quite the same since. From promising junior in the 1970s, national amateur cover boy in 1978, designing courses over decades. writing on the game and caddying for Christina Kim in this year’s Vic Open, Mike Clayton has made a grand contribution to Victoria golf. 14 Golf Victoria