WHEN Cherie Alison (nee Byrnes) is asked what possessed her to quit her club professional’s job on beautiful Hamilton Island in Queensland’s Whitsundays, she provides an easy answer. “It was a good lifestyle, but living on an island has a certain lifespan,” says Cherie, who is the golf operations manager and club professional at Port […]
PROFESSIONAL golfer Wayne Perske is the happiest he’s been for a long time and that could spell trouble for his counterparts as he goes about resurrecting his career. The former Japan Golf Tour winner is back in the game as a full-time player after more than two years on the sidelines and is on a […]
American Stacy Lewis closed with a pair of birdies on The Old Course at St Andrews and earned her second major championship at the Ricoh Women’s British Open.
Back in 1983 when a young blond-haired Peter Fowler won the Australian Open and set out on an international career, he probably figured 30 years later he would be sitting in front of the fireplace wearing slippers and telling his grandkids how good he once was.
Not in the case of Fowler. The 54-year-old veteran is currently putting the slipper into the backsides of the best European Senior Tour Players and pocketing some serious Euros as a result.
IT wasn’t hard to figure out what Vikki Wrigley (nee Tutt) was going to do with her life.
Vikki is hewn from golfing stock, her father Peter Tutt was the golf professional at Newcastle’s Waratah Golf Club, her brother Trevor was a trainee professional so it was inevitable she would pursue a golf career.
QUEENSLAND volunteer of the year Terry Ward says the golf industry would benefit from a volunteers program that compensates younger golf club members who volunteer their time.
COLOURFUL is just one of the words used to describe the working life of Strathfield Golf Club general manager Neil Hardy. Other words that come to mind include exciting, intoxicating, fun, stressful, hectic and testing. It started when he left school to work the floor of the stock exchange during the exciting Poseidon nickel boom […]
Frank Williams needs little introduction in Australian golfing circles. As co-founder of the Australian Masters golf tournament, business manager to Greg Norman/Great White Shark Enterprises, Director at the ALPG and a raft of entrepreneurial endeavours, it can certainly be said that this man knows his golf. So when Williams announced that he was coming out of retirement to launch an exciting, brand-new event in Australian golf, the industry stood up and took notice.
In late January I played in one of the International Qualifying events for the Open Championship—or as some know it the British Open—and I was lucky enough to finish 2nd over the 36 holes with rounds of 68, 67 at Kingston Heath Golf Club to earn my ticket to the oldest championship of all. Well, […]
SCOTT Proctor has been at the helm of Meadows Springs Golf and Country Club for five years and his hospitality background, hard work, common sense and a hands-on approach is working wonders.
THE decision to drop out of university and pursue a career in golf has paid dividends for Matt Cleverdon after he was named Victorian Teaching Professional of the Year.
PROFESSIONAL golfers say golf can be a lonely sport, but many rookie professionals are left feeling forlorn when playing in a foreign country. Young Perth-born professional Jessica Speechley, a rookie on the Japan LPGA Tour, is one of those players.
Hailing from Port Macquarie Golf Club where he completed his PGA Traineeship, Steven Jeffress has become a prolific Pro-Am winner with more than 30 victories to his name. Starting this month, he will be providing a behind-the-scenes look at ‘life of tour’, both here in Australia and abroad. Jeffress’ maiden victory came in the 2006 […]
UNASSUMING and modest, Kel Nagle easily masks his significant golfing deeds. “It’s been a nice journey,” is how this quiet, humble man sums up his stellar career, which includes winning the centenary Open Championship at St Andrews. Still, Kel has an astonishing recall for tournaments he played in more than 50 years ago. He can […]
OLD habits are hard to break – especially when you’re Adam Scott. The 32-year-old with movie star good looks is rightly Australia’s pin-up boy after winning the US Masters, but when he attended Kooralbyn International School in the late 1990s he wasn’t shown any special favours, according to former classmate Henry Epstein. Scott, like most […]
Su Hyun Oh tweets an early morning photo of a vacant chipping green at Metropolitan Golf Club with the caption “entire green to myself!” The 16-year-old amateur has both a handle on the ever-advancing digital space and a genuine love for the game she has played since the age of nine. I stand beside her […]
In my opinion, golf’s newest sensation, Rory McIlroy, is the real deal. I have no doubt that this is the guy who will dominate our game for the next decade. With the exception of Louis Oosthuizen at The British Open, no player other than Woods has been able crush a Major field like McIlroy did in his two victories.
FORMER champion touring professional Brian Jones is slowing down … and for good reason. The 61-year-old, an 11-time winner on the Japan Tour, says he fears he will become a “nutcase” if he continues playing tour events.
AUSTRALIAN veteran and European Tour stalwart Peter O’Malley has quit the European Tour. Bathurst-born O’Malley began 2011 with good intentions, but his season never really caught fire so, after more than two decades, he has pulled the pin although he hasn’t exactly hung up the clubs. “I have just finished playing in Europe and next […]
A mid-week wander down to the driving range provided me with a glimpse of one of the most interesting swings I have seen in a long while. The guy swinging the club was tall, very tall and somewhat… “Praying Mantis”-like. A closer look revealed that it was my good buddy, Chris Anstey. So I took […]
Stuart Appleby is well known for his extraordinary golfing achievements around the world but on home soil he is also known for his contribution to junior golf. In 2012, the evolution of his beloved junior golf foundation, Stuart Appleby Junior Golf, will take its next steps, joining forces with Golf Victoria to form the development […]
Every now and again I get to catch up with my old mate Andrew Gaze and talk, amongst other things, golf. The ex-NBL/NBA star, Olympian, basketball legend and all-round great bloke has plenty of stories up that very long sleeve. And the guy certainly loves his golf. Prior to a recent chat—when he thought nobody […]
IF former Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting could, he’d play golf seven-days-a-week. That’s how much he loves the game. Punter, as he is known in cricket circles, grew up in a sporting family. His father Graeme was a good golfer, cricketer and played Australian Rules Football and his mother Lorraine was a state vigoro champion. […]
THE ANZ RACV Ladies Masters at Royal Pines Resort had it all – a new world number one in Yani Tseng, a couple of former number ones, colourful characters, golfers from almost every golf playing nation on the planet and plenty of eagles and birdies. It even had Europe’s number one – little-known South African […]
PGA Australia chief Max Garske –one of the most influential figures in golf in this country — is stepping down from his post after 23 years as CEO. He leaves behind a very different organisation to the one he joined back in 1985 and a legacy of achievement that will be difficult to emulate.
You may remember in November that we featured young “Rising Star” Matthew Samen-Curtis — a 14-year-old Pennant Team player at Caloundra Golf Club. Matthew had unexpectedly found himself atop the leaderboard following regulation play at the inaugural Glasshouse Mountains OPEN Amateur Championships. Following a six-way playoff against a very difficult field, Matthew was pipped at […]
AUSTRALIAN professional Rachel L Bailey has put the demons of a debilitating health problem behind her as she prepares for an assault on the Ladies European Tour (LET). For the past three years Bailey, who turned pro in 2003 and played the US Futures Tour, has worked hard on and off the golf course to […]
Rickie Fowler brings excitement to golf like no other player of his age. Proving his mettle throughout the 2010 PGA Tour season, Fowler notched seven top-10’s, won US$2.8 million, was a captain’s pick for the Ryder Cup and was named Rookie of the Year. It was colour and movement all the way, yet there is more to come as Fowler sets his sights on 2011 for the Presidents Cup and his first win on the PGA Tour.
Australia’s top-ranked amateur and world number 15, Ryan McCarthy, is out of the game for the interim period following a surfing accident which resulted in the 21-year-old dislocating his left shoulder. McCarthy was swimming in the surf at Redhead Beach on the Saturday of the Lake Macquarie Amateur when, without warning, his left shoulder popped. […]
BRUCE and Sandy Ottaway had it all worked out – work hard for a few more years and then sail off into the sunset. But Mother Nature scuttled their plans when the disastrous Brisbane flood ripped through their golf supplies business at Rocklea.
The next time you’re lining up a putt, gauging the distance to the green, or simply just trying to make contact with the ball, imagine what it would be like to accomplish the feat without being able to see.
Tom Lewis continues to show why he is one of the world’s best amateurs. At the Australian Open in Sydney, the 20-year-old Englishman collected the amateur medal for the championship. The week before in the Hunter Valley he’d pushed European Tour journeyman Peter O’Malley to the wire at the NSW Open championship, eventually going out […]
US President George W. Bush once called former Prime Minister John Howard “a man of steel”, but Australian golf’s man of steel has to be Peter Senior. Senior showed his mettle when he rallied to win his third Australian PGA Championship at age 51 – the oldest winner of the event. And he captured the […]
THE first thing you notice about rookie professional Alison Whitaker is not nervous tension but her good natured humour
