Innholdsfortegnelse for Dec 2022 - Issue 403 i Golf Australia

Seven days is apparently how long it takes to fix the car of a professional golfer, who crashes through a rancher’s fence while avoiding a cow on an isolated country road. Seven days is also – conveniently – how long it takes theTexan pastoral community of Utopia to perform Christian conversion therapy on said golfer. Welcome to Seven Days in Utopia (2011). What is it about golf in movies as a metaphor for some deeper spiritual journey? Isn’t it enough to simply let a golf movie be about golf? Perhaps director Matthew Dean Russell saw The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) and concluded that sparkly, ephemeral cinematography is what you need to open viewers’ mouths in wonder just wide enough to shove a heavy-handed lifelesson down their unsuspecting throats. Seven…

A world class field including eight international athletes will contest this year’s ground-breaking Australian All Abilities Championship (AAAC), which will be played as part of the ISPS Handa Australian Open from December 1 to 4. Golf Australia has announced 12 players will tee it up in the AAAC at Victoria Golf Club and will include newly ranked World No.1 Kipp Popert, from the United Kingdom, as well as five of the top-six rated All Abilities players in the world. Four Australians – Geoff Nicholas, Stephen Prior, Cameron Pollard and Mike Rolls – will carry home country hopes in the event. Golf Australia’s Programs and Inclusion Senior Manager, Christian Hamilton, said the field was stronger than the last AAAC, which was played at The Australian GC in Sydney in 2019. “It…

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The World No.20 will be one of the favourites to win the historic Women’s Australian Open when it is contested on the Melbourne Sandbelt from December 1 to 4. Here, we highlight the swing that puts her among the very best ball-strikers on the LPGA. GREEN’S STATS AT A GLANCE 1 ADDRESS This is a great setup position. It’s balanced and looks really comfortable … there’s nothing forced here. There is no reaching for the ball as her arms hang straight down from her shoulders. Hannah’s lower back is straight, and there is a subtle flex in her knees. Throughout this swing we will highlight one of Green’s strengths, which is the impressive way she uses her legs and feet. 2 THE FIRST MOVE Hannah’s first move is different to…

Born and bred in St. Andrews in the Scottish kingdom of Fife, Tom Mitchell Morris’ life was golf. At the age of 14, in 1835, he was apprenticed to Allan Robertson – widely regarded as the game’s first professional – learning the skills to make featherie balls and clubs, while also caddying for R&A members. When paired together on the course, the master and his apprentice were unbeatable. Morris was by Robertson’s side when he oversaw the building of an original 10-hole layout, which would later become Carnoustie. But Morris and Robertson had a huge falling out when the protégé beat his mentor in a match, which was only further complicated when Morris chose to use the then new gutta percha ball. Robertson demanded he play with the more expensive…

Mt Gambier is approximately halfway between Melbourne and Adelaide, via the Princes Highway, and is famous for its Blue Lake. But in recent years, the par-72 layout at Mt Gambier Golf Club has found plenty of favour from golfers. Located just north of the city, the course, which was first established in 1909, covers the undulating terrain created by rolling sand hills. This landscape has given rise to an interesting and challenging layout, which is also widely regarded as one of the best presented courses in regional South Australia. The conditioning is complemented by plenty of holes where the elevation change from tee-to-green adds to the fun. For example, the slightly uphill 500-metre par-5 7th offers a wide fairway but the ideal playing line from tee is to the right…

YANCHEP • WESTERN AUSTRALIA Ask Mike Clayton what he thinks about the quality of golf to be found in Perth and he will get straight to the point. “Had Alister MacKenzie visited Perth instead of Melbourne, we would have spent nearly a century now admiring its world famous sandbelt courses,” said Clayton, Golf Australia magazine’s Architecture Editor and one of this country’s foremost course designers. “There is sand everywhere and the rolling landscape is ideally made for golf.” A fine example of what Clayton describes can be found at Sun City Country Club at Yanchep, a 50-minute drive north of Perth’s CBD. “Like so much of the golf course land in and around Perth, Sun City is blessed with brilliant undulation and a bed of sand,” Clayton says. But it’s…

When Matt Tissiman stumbled across a snake while looking for a lost ball in some bushes, he did what anyone of us would do. He jumped clear and “got out of there”. After the reptilian encounter, he played the final four holes of his round at Perth’s Seaview Golf Club – making two birdies among them – before realising he had actually been bitten. “After finding the fairway on the 6th hole, I teed up another ball as it was a slow day on the course …. It was a big left miss,” Matt, an engineering and finance student, said. He started searching for his ball in the left rough and into a clump of bushes. “I heard all of this rustling, I’ve looked down to my right and the…

Amongst the candles on the cake to celebrate the 50th anniversary of WPGA Tour of Australasia this year will be one lit to mark the life and passing of Margie Masters, the first Australian to play and win on the LPGA Tour. While not a member during her playing life – Masters turned professional in 1965, seven years before theTour’s formation – her role in the history of Australian women’s professional golf cannot be overstated. Career highlights included Rookie of the Year in 1965 and winning the 1967 Quality Chek’d Classic, defeating Carol Mann, KathyWhitworth and Mickey Wright by a shot. For context, these greats won 208 LPGA titles and 21 majors between them. Her other win was the YankeeTeams event with Clifford Ann Creed. She tied second to Wright…

After a nomadic existence since its inauguration in 1929, the Australian PGA Championship found a home in the Sunshine State at the turn of the century when it visited Royal Queensland Golf Club for the first time. Coming back the next year suited Robert Allenby just fine, the Victorian successfully defending the championship under the shade of the enormous Gateway Bridge that rumour has it Greg Norman once hit a golf ball over. The tournament, now named for sponsor Fortinet, then moved further north to the then Hyatt Regency Coolum Resort, before the Gold Coast and RACV Royal Pines Resort took on hosting duties. After a successful stint, January 2022 marked time for the event to return to Brisbane and a Royal Queensland layout that Golf Australia magazine architecture editor…

Bunker shots can strike fear into the hearts of some handicap golfers. And don’t mention the despair felt when faced with a shot from an uneven lie. Of course, there is plenty to think about when confronted with a bunker escape. Getting the ball out and on the green (for some, the flag isn’t even considered) raises plenty of questions. How much do I open the clubface? What’s the ball position? How deep do I shuffle my feet into the sand? How far behind the ball should I hit the sand behind the ball? While you might notice the ball sitting on any severe slope, it’s easy to miss a slight slope, which can really affect your swing path and result in the ball not going where you want it…

To be a great player around the greens you need to be creative just as much as you need to have good skills. One such player is Cam Smith, who possesses all the greenside skills but also has the ability to visualise more than one shot solution. All of which were born out of spending hours as a teen hitting all manner of different shots around the greens of his home club, Wantima, in Brisbane. Unlike Smith, too many players can get caught up in technique and mechanics and, therefore, hit only a few specific shots which they use everywhere. Some of this can be attributed to playing the same kind of golf courses all the time. We see it on the PGATour regularly where players who have been brought…

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In the 118-year history of the men’s Australian Open, an asterisk appears next to the final result of two championships – *shortened to 54 holes. The first was in 1985 at Royal Melbourne when heavy rain forced the abandonment of the opening round and reduced the Open to 54 holes. Greg Norman would claim his second Stonehaven Cup, defying horrible final round conditions as 50-60 knot winds played havoc. Treacherous pin positions, in tandem with the high winds, tormented the field with no player breaking par in the final round. Mother Nature might have been to blame for the shortening of the 1985 championship, but it was human error that added an asterisk next to the result of the 2002 Australian Open at Victoria Golf Club. With hardly a cloud…

Think back to December of 2019. Before you had any idea what COVID was. You’d likely never had a PCR or RAT test. And the closest thing to LIV Golf on your radar was the PGA Tour’s bizarre and confusing tagline “Live Under Par”. That was the state of the world, and golf, when the men’s Australian Open was last held, and local boy and club member Matt Jones won a second Stonehaven Cup at The Australian Golf Club in an eery bushfire induced smog that forced Kiwi Ryan Chisnall to wear one of the masks we were all soon to become all too ofay with Go back to 2005 and that was the last time the men’s national Open was held in Victoria and cast your mind back to 2002,…

It has been 20 long years since Australia’s major golf championship was played on a Melbourne Sandbelt course and surely no one disagrees it’s too long to have been absent from one of the finest groups of courses in the world. It’s one-eyed parochialism to suggest the Sandbelt is the finest group of courses in the world because it’s competing with all the great golf in New York, Philadelphia, and London but to be mentioned in the same company makes Melbourne one of the most significant centres of golf architecture in the world. Originally the Sandbelt was the construct of intrepid golfers seeking out better golf. Previously they had made rudimentary courses on the heavy, clay soils close to their homes in the inner-city suburbs before traveling by car became…

From the rolling hills of the Hunter Valley wine country, to Newcastle’s beachside suburbs and north to the holiday haven of Port Stephens, New South Wales’ Hunter region is a golfer’s playground. If you are planning a golf trip to the Hunter, any time is a great time to take in the sights of wine country. But summer is perhaps the most vibrant and exciting time. Towards the end of January, vintage begins and the Hunter Valley becomes alive with both hand and machine picking in the vineyards. Warm days mean mornings on the course, afternoons exploring the vineyards and evenings cooling by the pool with a glass of local wine in your hand. November through to March is also Day On The Green concert season when wineries, like Bimbadgen…

Murray Downs Golf & Country Club is one of the great golfing successes to be found along Australia’s greatest tributary, the Murray River. The course lies on land that was once part of the sprawling Murray Downs station. In 1860, the ill-fated explorers Burke and Wills passed through the property and left behind a sick camel. A local pioneer bought the station and found the rolling landscape perfect for establishing fields of lucerne, maize and oranges. Sheep then became the mainstay of the property for more than a century. That was until the late 1980s when the heart of the property was earmarked for a real estate development and a new golf course. The Murray Downs club and course was constructed during the poker machinefuelled club building boom that occurred…