ADAM’S MAGIC 6-IRON

In the opening round of the 2011 Australian Open at The Lakes, Adam Scott was 199 metres from the flag on the par-5 8th hole when his 6-iron drew in on the north-east breeze, pitched six metres under the hole and rolled in, to great acclamation from the gallery and caddie Steve Williams.

RIGHT: PHOTO: Getty Images.

“The shot looked like it was heading just right of the hole. It drew just more than I wanted it to but a bit of luck goes a long way,” Scott said.

“It’s the first (albatross) I’ve had since I was 17 in the Greg Norman Junior Masters (at Coolangatta-Tweed in 1997) so it’s quite a while between drinks.”

It was the first Australian Open albatross carded since Matthew Zions holed a 223-metre 5-wood for two on the par-5 14th hole at The Australian Golf Club in 2007.

NEWTON’S ROAR

Immediately following his closing 72 on the Sunday of the 1979 Australian Open at Metropolitan, Jack Newton described his round as “rubbish”, so often was he in the trees, rough and bunkers.

Yet on a course described by journalist Terry Smith as “tight and treacherous” it was a round Newton’s friend Seve Ballesteros would have been proud.

RIGHT: PHOTO: Getty Images.

From a fairway bunker on 15, one of eight traps he found that day, Newton hit what he thought was a pure approach only to see the ball run off the back of the green. His 10-metre chip with an 8-iron pitched perfectly, ran out, hit the flag and dropped in. The birdie took him to even par and equal-top with Greg Norman and Bob Shearer.

“Considering I had already holed a bunker shot, putted in from off the green and now chipped in this really was an incredible round,” Newton recalled in Smith’s ‘The Champions and The Courses They Played’. “Houdini would not have got out of some of the spots I found myself in.”

Newton appeared destined for a play-off until Norman, who had led by four with nine holes to play, three-putted 18 and lost by a shot.

Newton finished the only player not over par in a field which along with Norman featured Ballesteros, Gary Player, David Graham, Fuzzy Zoeller, Hubert Green, Graham Marsh, Bruce Devlin and Billy Dunk. 

SARAZEN THRILLS IN TAMWORTH

Gene Sarazen toured the world in 1934 after ignoring Dr Clifford Roberts’ invitation to play in his new ‘Masters’ invitational tournament at Augusta National. (Sarazen binned the letter without opening it, believing that Roberts was “trying to sell me insurance or something.”)

RIGHT: PHOTO: Getty Images.

Sarazen, the 1932 Open Champion, arrived in Australia with trick-shot artist and 1920 Australian Open champion Joe Kirkwood, and spent two months touring the country, literally, playing matches everywhere from Narrandera to Toowoomba.

In October 1934, after Sarazen and his wife were welcomed to Tamworth by an informal function at the local Rotary Club, Kirkwood took on the local links and its new ‘grass’ greens, recently seeded from the sand scrapes.

The 1st hole at Tamworth was a 520-metre uphill par-5. According to reports the course had been drenched by two inches of rain. Yet Sarazen’s second shot reached the green in two. No-one had seen anything like it. No-one believed it possible.

It was a display of power-hitting which “thrilled the locals who had never witnessed such an exhibition,” according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Sarazen would shoot 62 and smash the club record of 66 (held by the great Walter Hagen).

A year later Sarazen did take up Roberts’ offer of an invite to the Masters and won the tournament after he landed the ‘Shot Heard Around the World’ in the final round, a 220-yard ‘cleek’ (call it a 5-wood) that saluted for an albatross on the par-5 15th.

THE VON MAKES KOOYONGA SPLASH

Peter Thomson had just turned 21 when he teed off in the 1950 Australian Open at Kooyonga. After rounds of 73, 76 and 72 left him eight shots behind leader Norman von Nida, the Victorian described in reports as an “assistant professional” proceed to tear the place apart.

And von Nida knew it.

“Peter had played nine holes before I’d teed off,” von Nida said. “He’d shot 30 on the first nine. It made it very, very difficult for me because the wind had sprung up and it was a much more difficult course than what it had been in the morning. It meant I had to concentrate more.”

PHOTO: Getty Images

Thomson would post a course record 66 but the Von’s powers of concentration held up until the final hole when his approach found a greenside trap. The wind was up. The gallery surrounding the green was six deep without ropes. It was von Nida’s sixth tilt at a championship he’d never won.

His bunker shot landed with butterfly’s feet to three feet. Then he holed the putt and won by one from Thomson with Kel Nagle two back and Ossie Pickworth, who played much of his round with a cigarette between his lips, in fourth.

BY JOH, WHAT A SHOT!

Tiffany Joh was an 18-year-old amateur from San Diego on her first trip to Australia when she teed it up in the 2005 Ladies Masters at Royal Pines. After 28 holes she was one-under and no guarantee to make the cut.

Then she went, to court some Australian vernacular, ‘berko’: four birdies in seven holes were followed by albatross on the last, courtesy of a 192-metre 5-wood. It all added up to a closing score of 63, which equalled the course record set by Karrie Webb and also equalled by Japan’s Ai Miyazato the day before.

“I really can’t put into words how I feel,” Joh said afterwards. “I had no idea until I checked the hole.”

It was the second-ever albatross in women’s professional golf in Australia following one by England’s Alison Nicholas.

BEAR’S BIG BASH

The first Australian Open at The Lakes was in 1964 and graced by a chubby, 24-year-old from Ohio whom Australian sportswriter Don Lawrence had coined, ‘The Golden Bear’. He was, of course, then three-time Major winner Jack Nicklaus.

A noted long hitter, a storyline leading into the tournament was whether Nicklaus would take on the monstrous 262-metre water-carry at the par-4 16th on a direct route to the green. Such was the weight of risk against reward that very few players, even with the wind, would go at the green with driver.

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Nicklaus didn’t either – he used 3-wood. His ball landed on the green and set up a birdie-three and a final round five-under 67. The score saw him draw level with Bruce Devlin, whom Nicklaus then beat by three shots in the 18-hole play-off to win his first of six Australian Open titles.

Ironically, in the first round, Nicklaus had made a triple-bogey on 16 after playing the hole the ‘conventional’ way.

RADAR WAS ON

Robert Allenby was a whip-thin 20-year-old amateur out of Box Hill Golf Club when he lasered a 5-iron at Royal Melbourne’s 18th flag in the closing stages of the 1991 Australian Open.

When his ball stiffed to a metre and he made the subsequent putt, he shared top billing on the leaderboard of his national open championship. And the press had a hero. They dubbed him ‘New Shark’ and ‘Normanby’.

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But another man with a couple of nicknames wasn’t done. Wayne ‘Radar’ Riley, aka ‘Wild Colonial Boy’, had birdied 16 and birdied 17 and joined Allenby at three-under atop the leaderboard. His approach to 18 came to rest 40 feet from the cup. Two putts for play-off with Kid Wonder was a likely outcome, according to popular opinion.

Riley, of course, stepped up, pulled the trigger and set it free, and watched it fall into the cup. And then, wearing a thick

Ping hat and a lemon-yellow sleeveless cardigan-come-waistcoat, Riley ran about the green in his spikes with his fist in the air like Lionel Messi.

Even if he still wasn’t sure he’d won.

“I actually didn’t know for sure I had won when I holed that putt,” Riley later told John Huggan. “But nobody coming along behind beat my score. I remember Robert hugging me after it was over. I didn’t even know him at the time. ‘That was incredible,’ he said. And it was.”

A year later, golf writer Peter Stone took Riley to the same spot on 18 and asked him to repeat the putt, which Riley did, sinking it on his 25th attempt.

And his 26th. 

CHASE’S ADELAIDE ACE

LIV Golf Adelaide in April this year is the richest golf tournament ever played in Australia and attracted massive, sold-out crowds to each of its three rounds.

The most popular hole at The Grange was the par-3 12th, fashioned after the ‘Party Hole’ at TPC Scottsdale and renamed the ‘Watering Hole’ for Australian sensibilities.

And it was all quite a to-do.

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A famous DJ did a ‘shoey’. A beer-bellied American comedian took his shirt off and twirled it around his head. And after each group teed off and wandered to the green through the alley of corporate tents, plastic cups of beer rained onto the tee like frothy mortars.

If Old Tom Morris was turning in his grave, Chase Koepka’s ace on day three may have had the old boy subterranean breakdancing. When Koepka’s slightly drawn 9-iron pitched, bounced, and rolled into the hole, it was like the entire Grange went batshit crazy.

As you may have seen on so many viral videos, so many cups rained down onto the tee, green and in-between that beer-mist filled the air like hops-based humidity. Koepka celebrated the achievement with a series of leaping chest-bumps with playing partners Ian Poulter and Paul Casey. Patrons roared like Romans.

Koepka told reporters he “smelt like beer the entire rest of the day.”

“That’s unbelievable,” he said. “That’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience and something to always remember. The next couple of hours I was out there, I was getting ovation after ovation as I walked up to every shot. It was pretty cool. That’s probably what Cam Smith felt like the entire week, but at least I got a glimpse of it.”

FINCHY’S FLUSHED 5-IRON

Roger Mackay was in a rich vein of form heading into the 1988 Australian Masters at Huntingdale. He’d won the 1987 Victorian Open and Australian PGA and was a crowd favourite with his handsome looks and ‘Mr Nice Guy’ persona.

When he birdied 18 on the Sunday and forced his way into a three-way play-off with Ian Baker-Finch and Craig Parry, momentum and many in the large gallery were with the West Australian.

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Until they weren’t, when Baker-Finch stiffed his 5-iron to 30cm on the first play-off hole. It was Baker-Finch’s first play-off win in six attempts and came over international drawcards Greg Norman, Bernhard Langer, Ian Woosnam and Nick Faldo.

TOOGOOD’S HOLE-IN-ONE

One of Australia’s greatest ever amateurs, Peter Toogood, was always going to make a mark on the game.

RIGHT: PHOTO: Des Tobin.

He, and his brother John, were born into a family of very good golfers. Peter’s father, Alf, was a professional and his grandfather, Alf Sr, was a pro in England and had finished fourth and T9 in the Open Championships of 1894 and 1895.

Alf Toogood moved to Tasmania from Adelaide in 1936 to take up the professional job at Kingston Beach Golf Club south of Hobart.

It was here, in January 1939, that the name Peter Toogood first came to the attention of the golfing world when the then eight-year-old made a hole-in-one on the 133-yard 7th hole, using a hickory-shafted 3-iron his father had made for him.

The incredible shot set the wheels in motion for a wonderful life in golf.

Peter never followed his father and grandfather into professional ranks, but he had an incredible amateur career, finishing the leading amateur at The Open in 1954, and the Australian Open four times between 1950 and 1957. He won the Australian Amateur in 1954, defeating his brother, John, in the final. He also won the Tasmanian Open eight times, and finished runner-up in the championship in 1950 … behind his father.

ROYALTY RULES BAROOGA

With nine holes to play in the 2022 Australian Mini Golf Open at the testing Sporties course at Cobram Barooga Golf Club, Henry Epstein – who goes everywhere by ‘King Henry’ – was leading by two shots from seven-time national champion Allan ‘The Putter King’ Cox and by four from rising touring professional Josh ‘The Putting Wonder From Down Under’ Mars.

RIGHT: PHOTO: Supplied.

And then Mars went into orbit. He aced 11, 12, 13 and 15 to sit just two back. Momentum? He was a runaway train.

And Esptein knew it.

“I knew he was coming,” Epstein says. “He was on the birdie train. The only way to stop it was to get on board.”

The 16th at Sporties is a difficult, undulating 30-footer with vertical cinder blocks and a pin-high berm left that players must roll upon with sufficient speed to break 90-degrees right and feed down to the hole … which is exactly what Epstein produced, his ace drawing him clear of the panting pack, even with Mars’ one off the wall on 17.