Not for one minute do we wish to demean the wonderful performances of our two recently crowned Australian amateur champions – Sydneysiders Rachel Lee and Jye Halls.
But how we yearn for the days when our national amateur titles were played over 36-holes of qualifying before the best 32 battled it out in match play – the purest form of the game.
We agree the superbly renovated Commonwealth and the soon to be extinct Cranbourne presented beautiful layouts for the men’s and women’s titles.
But sadly, we also believe playing the events over 72 holes of stroke play – a relatively recent innovation – has taken the lustre off the what was once the time-honoured pinnacle of the Australian annual amateur calendar.
Now it is just another run of the mill stroke play amateur event and has almost had its place at the top of the amateur table usurped by a few other ‘cooked-up’ events which seem to get more airplay because of their sponsorship and slicker publicity machines.
There was a time when a fortnight was devoted to amateur golf for the interstate series and the Australian Amateur.
The three papers in Melbourne had their designated golf writers in attendance every day with a photographer. The papers devoted a page at least to showcasing our best amateur players. ABC radio was there too.
We know we might be living in the past here. But we challenge anyone to find a smidgin of interest by mainstream media in the recent happenings at Cranbourne and Commonwealth.
Nobody apart from serious golf aficionados would have any idea who the new champions are. Which is a pity when you run your eye over the events’ honour boards.
Previous women’s winners include Grace Kim, Minjee Lee, Lydia Ko, Kristie Smith, and Stacey Keating in recent times. And even earlier, Louise Briers, Edwina Kennedy and Lindy Goggin.
While men’s names like Cameron Davis, Cameron Smith, Brendan Jones, Brett Rumford, Matthew Goggin, Greg Chalmers and Michael Campbell have won it in the last 30 years or so. Going further back. Ossie Moore, Roger Mackay, Mike Clayton, Terry Gale, Bob Shearer, Tom Crow, Dock Bachli, Tony Gresham and Bruce Devlin.
Apologies to those we have missed. But you get the point we are making.
We should mention here, too, that our esteemed editor, Rob Willis, does not tell you much about his golf career. But we know he, too, figured in a great final at Royal Queensland before WA’s Chris Gray prevailed 3 and 2 in 1990.
A favourite memorable final (2013) was when a Queensland kid by the name of Cameron Smith trailed seasoned amateur golfer Geoff Drakeford by five holes on Drakeford’s home course. Smith, a callow youth, came back for victory.
Oh, the joy of match play. You are only out of the contest when your run out of holes and that’s the beauty of it.
Match play seems to have died a natural death in professional ranks, too.
We used to love watching the World Match Play at Wentworth on television and remember when Graham Marsh won; the Robert Boyd Transport match play championship at Kingston Heath was also a huge success in bygone days.
There must have been 20,000 people there one Saturday morning when Mike Harwood beat Greg Norman in one of the great upsets.
It didn’t matter a hoot that the big name was bundled out. That was the joy of the format.
The World Match Play was another great event hosted at Melbourne’s Metropolitan when Steve Sticker prevailed.
We also believe a huge part of the allure of the time-honoured Ryder Cup is because of the head-to-head nature of the match play competition. Likewise, the Presidents
Cup.
Who will ever forget the excitement generated in 1998 when Peter Thomson outfoxed Jack Nicklaus for a rare victory over the US at Royal Melbourne? Craig Parry holing a chip shot to close out a match is a great memory.
You get our drift by now.
Long live match play golf, we say, and bring it back for the Australian Amateur – men’s and women’s.
Now a valued contributor to Inside Golf magazine, Michael Davis enjoyed a long and illustrious career as a sporting journalist with The Australian and Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspapers, primarily covering AFL and golf. In his role as a golf writer, he attended many major championships, and was a regular at Australia’s most significant tournaments, including at several Australian Amateur Championships.
