By Peter Owen
THERE’S something about Wynnum Golf Club that attracts extraordinary loyalty – not just from the golfers who play the parkland-style course, but from the people who work there.
Legendary club pro Paul King ran Wynnum’s golf shop for more than 40 years before handing over to his son Matt, whose own tenure as head pro now spans 22 years.
And Jason Adams, 54, has just notched 25 continuous years as course superintendent at the Brisbane bayside club – a milestone that doesn’t count the nine years he put in before heading north to play for the North Queensland Cowboys in the late 1990s.
“It’s the members,” Adams says. “They’re just such good people. The members and the staff. Everybody says hello. They pop into our shed and swap jokes. You don’t get that in other jobs.”
Adams was just 16 when he first applied for an apprenticeship at Wynnum. He was in year 12 at Cleveland High School and, by his own admission, was never a great scholar.
He’d grown up on a hobby farm and was much more at home growing things than studying literature or history.
“My dad came with me for the interview,” Adams said. “I missed out on the apprenticeship, but they were looking for a groundsman, as well, and they offered me that job. They said I could study at college at nights.
“And the money was much better, too.
“The interview was on a Tuesday and they asked me to start work the following Monday,” he said. “Dad congratulated me on getting the job, then told me I had to go back to school until the Friday.”
Jason Adams and the course he’s worked at for 34 years.
Later, an apprenticeship as a greenkeeper became available, and Adams claimed it. The pay, however, was less than that of a groundsman and Wynnum Golf Club made up the difference. “This club has always been good to me,” he said,
Adams had played rugby league with Wynnum Manly as a front row forward and, in 1997, was lured north to play for the North Queensland Cowboys during the Super League period.
Spending most of the time with the reserves squad, he returned to Brisbane in late 1998, taking a job as a greenkeeper at Royal Queensland.
Though he enjoyed his time at one of Queensland’s most prominent golf clubs, Adams always yearned for a return to the bayside and was thrilled when he was appointed Wynnum’s superintendent in 1999.
He has no plans of moving anywhere else.
“The staff are great and I love the people here,” he said.
Adams brings his pet kelpie Roy to work every day and says the dog is more popular with the members than he. “People come into the shed every day and ask, ‘where’s Roy’?” he said.
His workmates are also his best friends, and he speaks of the appreciation he felt when they presented him with a cake in March at a surprise celebration of his 25 years’ as superintendent.
Adams heads a team of six greenkeepers, groundsmen and apprentices – soon to be increased to seven – and is proud of the improvements that have been made to the course over the past quarter century.
Wynnum is famous for hosting the richest one-day tournament in the country – the Bartons BMD/Wynnum Pro-Am which, in 2022, offered prizemoney of $100,000. It’s held immediately following the Queensland PGA and invariably attracts a strong field.
Adams and his team spend eight weeks preparing the course so that it’s at its best for the big day.
“We work hard to get it right, to make it something special. Of course, some of the members always ask why we can’t have it like that all the year round.”
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