By Peter Owen
PETER Lewis has been a member, club captain, board member, volunteer and secretary of the Proserpine Golf Club, on the Whitsunday Coast in north Queensland, for more than 40 years.
Yet he reckons he learned more in a recent five-hour Golf Australia workshop than he had in all that time on the golf course and around the board table.
“I learned, for instance, how important it was to have a policy in place for child protection,” he said. “And I learned that a board needed to manage things – not do the work themselves.
“That’s a mistake I feel is often being made in big and small clubs around the country.”
Lewis took on the task of secretary of Proserpine after selling his family’s local weekly newspaper, the Proserpine Guardian, and retiring from a lifetime in country newspapers.
He and Warren Deighton, the president of Proserpine’s veteran golfers, made the six-hour round trip to Townsville to attend one of five workshops organised by Golf Australia to promote golf in some of Queensland’s more remote areas.
They were staged in Townsville, Cairns, Rockhampton, Bundaberg and Toowoomba, through funding provided by the Queensland Government’s Sport and Recreation Active Industry Base Fund. The idea was to upskill clubs and deliver resources to assist remote golf clubs.
Lewis said Deighton was so excited about what he learned that the former Commonwealth Bank officer, who took early retirement, promised to run for the position of club treasurer at the next election.
The workshops included presentations by Golf Australia officers, Golf Industry Central’s Mike Orloff and CPR Group director Steve Connelly. CPR is Australia’s leading sports governance, planning and community development provider.
Lewis said he had been reminded of the need to account for every dollar spent by the club, the benefit of seeking alternate income streams like mini golf, of reflecting ‘happy faces’ in golf club promotional material, and of the importance of beautifying the course and developing scenic gardens.
“I remember doing a workshop with the Country Press Association when I was in the newspaper game, and they were emphatic that all business proprietors should walk across to the other side of the street and ask: ‘What would make me cross the street to buy something from that business?’
“I now ask: ‘What would make me return to this course for another game?” he said.
Proserpine already has significant runs on the board. The club has a membership of 430 and fields for the Saturday competition have increased from about 40, when Lewis first joined, to more than 100.
The club also hosts theme nights and dinners to commemorate things like St Patrick’s Day, while the pro shop boasts the only simulator in North Queensland.
The series of workshops attracted clubs of all different sizes, from 16 members to more than 1000. They were so well received that Golf Australia intends to repeat them in coming years.
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