RELATED:
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
MEMORIES of Peter Thomson’s unique round at Bendigo Golf Club in 1956 have come flooding back following the golfing legend’s death this week.
Thomson, a five-time British Open champion, died on Wednesday, aged 88, following a more than four-year struggle with Parkinson’s disease.
The first Australian to win the British Open in 1954, he claimed the title four more times in 1955, 1956, 1958 and 1965.
His record in the event is equalled only by American Tom Watson.
Thomson, who also won the Australian Open in 1951 and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1988, visited Bendigo Golf Club for an exhibition match in April 1956.
He fired a brilliant 71 – one over par – partnering former country amateur champion Max Nunn (75), to defeat then state amateur champion Hartley Mitchell (74) and Bendigo club professional Bob Brown (72).
Thomson and Munn won the match three and two.
According to a report in the Bendigo Advertiser on April 16, 1956, Thomson ‘warmly praised’ the Bendigo course layout, but added “there were too many trees” and its “sand scrapes should be much larger”.
Thomson, who by that point had won two of his British Open titles, commented Bendigo would have “an excellent course if undulating grass greens were constructed”.
“It would greatly add to the enjoyment of golf by club members,” he told the Advertiser
They were eventually added in the early 1960s.
Despite strong winds and heavy rain soaking the course, it was reported Thomson gave “a glorious display of stroke making, which thrilled the large gallery of 500 people, who followed the most-interesting four-baller”.
“The visiting star displayed a keenness which has made him world famous,” the report read.
“He never hurried a shot, took careful stock of the terrain and spent some time measuring the distance with his eye before taking up his stance.
“Proof of his world class was seen in his tee-shots, only once on the 16th was he off line.”
Among those in the gallery that day was former Bendigo Golf Club committeeman Victor Cahill, who spent the day following the action with former Advertiser sports reporter and later editor Cyril Michelsen.
“I guess the best way to describe Peter was that he was not just a top sportsman, but he was a gentleman,” Cahill said.
“He spoke to everybody and about anything.
“It’s a broad statement – and it’s already been written – but not only was he one of Australia’s top golfers, he was one of our nation’s best representatives and ambassadors.
“I feel very proud to this day that we had him play on our golf course.
“It would have been one of the biggest crowds to watch a golf match in Bendigo.”
Thomson has not been the only famous golfer to grace the fairways at Bendigo.
Cahill, who joined the club as a junior member in 1941 and is now 93, recalled watching South Africa’s four-time British Open champion Bobby Locke in action in 1950 and later one of only five golfers to win all four majors, Gary Player.
One of the world’s top players in the 1920s and 30s Gene Sarazen also played at Bendigo, as did Norman Von Nida in 1951.
According to the Advertiser report, Nunn and Mitchell played ‘exceptional’ golf in the closing stages, while Brown remained steady, “his putting being easily the best of the four player.”
Just months after playing in Bendigo, Thomson would win his third British Open.
Thomson, who later served as president of the Australian PGA for 32 years, regarded his 1965 open win as his finest, after beating the three players acknowledged as the best in the world at the time in Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player.