
A typical Saturday morning at Kingaroy Golf Club with a large number of juniors attending clinics.
CHRIS Sarquis has always been a man in a hurry.
At the age of 18, when most of his peers were playing amateur tournaments or seeking a job as a trainee in a golf shop, he turned professional and a year later made his way onto the Australasian PGA Tour.
He then joined the RAAF and spent a dozen years in the armed forces.
And, later, when he returned to the family farm outside Kingaroy, joined the local golf club and became president, he wasted no time implementing policies that would transform the century-old Kingaroy Golf Club into one of the most vibrant country clubs in Queensland.
Sarquis, who grew up on the Sunshine Coast, where his father Paul was a long-time senior sergeant of police, has been involved in golf ever since he joined Caloundra Golf Club as a junior member at the age of five.
An outstanding junior, he spent two years playing professionally before joining the Australian Defence Force, serving two tours in the Middle East, and captaining the ADF golf team.
But he’d always felt the pull of the bush and, when he was able, happily relocated his young family to Kingaroy to run the cattle property, which had been owned and operated by his family for four generations.

CELEBRATIONS ALL ROUND – (from left, back) vice-president John Dalton, greenkeeper Jamie Healey, president Chris Sarquis, volunteer greenkeeper Geoff Pyke, (front) vice-captain Susan Mahoney, and management committee member Catherine Mahoney.
Inevitably he became an active member of Kingaroy Golf Club, established in 1925 and one of the longest running clubs in the South Burnett region of southern Queensland. Sarquis became president in December 2022, and set about changing the culture of the club.
His vision was for a club that was entirely inclusive, open to everyone, respectful of all members regardless of age or gender, and where everybody felt they belonged.
“A member is a member at Kingaroy,” Sarquis, now 38, said. “We’re all one club. We have equal opportunity and equal say.”
Those aren’t just hollow words. Sarquis says junior members of Kingaroy Golf Club have the same playing rights as adults, including the ability to play in members’ competitions whenever they like. Sarquis established a players’ committee – made up of six women and six men – which runs all the competitions. Women play together on Thursdays and men on Wednesdays, but every other competition allows for mixed play – male, female and juniors.
Sarquis said it wasn’t easy to change a culture that had been decades in the making, but changing the way things had traditionally been done had created astonishing outcomes. Membership has grown by more than 30 percent in the past year, female numbers are up by 40 percent and junior membership by 45 percent.
“We’ve changed the environment and if you change the environment you change the outcome,” he said.
Before Sarquis took over there was no golf shop at Kingaroy. But, calling on the relationship he had developed with Titleist over 30 years, he made a few phone calls, invited a group of Titleist executives to visit and, within a few weeks, had established a Titleist Showcase Shop at the club.
Last year it generated income of more than $170,000 – all profits going to the club. “I manage the shop,” Sarquis said. “I do it for free and probably spend about 40 hours a week there.”
Working long, unpaid hours is par for the course for a dedicated band of volunteers at Kingaroy Golf Club, where the only paid employees are head greenkeeper Grant Green and a couple of bar staff.
Sarquis, himself, devotes up to 50 hours a week to golf club business. John Dalton, who was president for six years before standing down for Sarquis and who remains vice-president, spends at least 40 hours a week helping to maintain and improve the course. Jane Franklin and Greg Nord, who run the junior program, don’t even count the number of hours they contribute.
“All members of the committee have their areas,” Sarquis said. “Together I reckon they put in more than 200 hours a week. We’re so lucky to have really good people in all the right places.
“This is now a very different club,” he said. “We’re getting people to come to Kingaroy especially to play golf here. It’s good for the whole area, and very important to all of us.”
But you sense Sarquis is most proud of his club’s success in developing young golfers – something he puts down to the efforts of junior coordinators Franklin and Nord.
“We want to build a love of the game within the juniors,” he said. “Kids will hold onto their memories. If they have a good experience when they’re young they’ll come back to the game, and to the club.”
With the assistance of Golf Australia, Kingaroy began Saturday morning MyGolf classes and everybody was thrilled when eight or 10 youngsters turned up. These days the number is upwards of 40, with four or five new juniors arriving some weeks.

Allie, daughter of Chris Sarquis, gets ready for a round of golf at Kingaroy.
The kids have their own place – a six-bay shed with a cement pad that has become Kingaroy Golf Club’s Junior Development Centre, where community instructors provide tuition each week, and where Pelican Waters-based coach Ari Sanjar – one of Grant Field’s teaching pros – visits each month.
Youngsters from throughout the South Burnett region are invited to attend these clinics, at no cost, and Kingaroy is rapidly becoming a key centre of training for young golfers.
Sarquis takes great pride in the number of juniors who are now playing three, five or nine-hole competitions, depending on their skill level, with some also competing in members’ competitions. “They’re not starting from scratch,” he said. “They know the basics of the game; the etiquette. They shake hands, wear appropriate clothes and know the rules.”
They have their own set of clubs, too, some of them provided by the club.
“It’s very important to us that our junior program is affordable for everybody,” Sarquis said. “So I contacted Craig Janz at SBG (Sunshine Coast Burnett Glasshouse) Golf and asked if they could help with some funding for golf clubs.
“We ran raffles and found some sponsorship and we’ve bought 25 sets of clubs for the juniors. When they go out on the course they have their own set of clubs now,” he said. “But we need to buy some more.”
Sarquis describes Kingaroy Golf Club as “a relaxed, professional club.” He carries out his role in a hands-on fashion and communicates well with the members, and is well supported by members of the management committee and sub-committees.
It surprised nobody when Kingaroy was named Golf Club of the Year (under 400 members) at 2024’s Queensland Golf Industry Awards, or when Sarquis was voted Volunteer of the Year at the same awards.