AMONG the young kids who regularly contest the three-hole competitions in the Glasshouse Mountains Zone Futures Tour, Billy Zerbst stands out.
He’s always the smallest.
That’s hardly surprising. He’s also the youngest – a four-year-old taking on five- and six-year-olds in a competition aimed at encouraging youngsters to learn and play the game of golf.
What is perhaps surprising is that little Billy Zerbst almost always wins.
His latest success came mid-October at Bribie Island where he took 17 strokes for the three holes. He also won at Virginia in early September, was the nett winner at Kilcoy in July, and the winner at Wynnum in June.
But perhaps his best effort was at Pine Rivers last month when he took 14 strokes for three holes and recorded a nett score of five. Five! That was 10 strokes better than the runner-up and the lowest nett score that anybody can ever recall for a three-hole junior event.
He also won the nearest-the-pin prize.
“He’s pretty special,” said Billy’s coach Emma Stanton, who supervises a squad of more than 20 kids at Woodford.
Billy, who is now a junior member at the club, joined the group when he was three.
“Normally we don’t take anyone younger than five,” Emma said. “But we made an exception in his case because we could see he had such natural talent.”
Billy’s dad Joel is a member of Pine Rivers and believes in giving his son every opportunity to learn and enjoy the game.
“Billy practises every day and is doing very well,” Emma said.
“Next year he will step up to six-hole competitions and then he’ll be competing with players more than twice his age,” she said. “That will be interesting.”
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