Jack's Rules

 Rules are made to be … bent a little at the annual Jack Newton Celebrity Classic at cypress lakes.

No big-day nerves for “Bride” Polly Travis
Images: Jack Newton Group

The rules of golf are observed quite strictly at the annual Jack Newton Celebrity Classic: this is a fairly fair dinkum tournament for the contingent of pros who are invited to play (the latest version went to a sudden-death playoff between eventual winner Ewan Porter, Aron Price and Ken Druce), and there are also many and generous prizes to reward the amateurs in their various categories – so scumbag cheats will not be tolerated. But Jack wouldn’t have it any other way, anyway: he is personally very passionate about the civilising and cultivating potential of this self-governing game to forge a next gen of well-rounded, sports-loving, damn-decent human beings, much in the image of the man himself. You wouldn’t want to earn this bloke’s ire.

Anyone familiar with the game will know, however, that there are two versions of the game’s rules. There’s the inviolable “Royal And Ancient” code of play that defines the game itself, and then at each course there are such things as “local rules”, determined by club committees to take into account peculiar course conditions and the like – free drops out of crocodile-infested billabongs, etc.The Jack Newton Celebrity Classic, however, played for the 31st time late last year at the fabulous Cypress Lakes resort in the Hunter Valley of NSW, offers a third category of rules that differentiate this tournament from any other.

Joey and The King
mages: Jack Newton Group

Rule number 1: For God’s sake don’t completely wipe yourself out at the welcoming dinner. Jack himself lays down this one when he takes the mike early on the first (Monday) evening and reminds all and sundry that “this is a Melbourne Cup, not a Golden Slipper”. We have two full days punctuated by three FULL nights ahead of us, and the way some fellas are hitting the giggle juice early, they’re going at it like there’s no tomorrow. There is. Two of them.

Rule number 2: All attempts by the fun police to breach the sanctity of this fabulous binge of golf, fine food and booze shall be thwarted, and to that end the invited journos should leave their dictaphones and notebooks in their villas after dark and cut everyone a bit of slack when the nights get (inevitably) loose. This seems reasonable: many of us are Jack’s guests, and

the event has found itself in the headlines for the wrong reasons a couple of times in the past when certain individuals have gone over the top, but for the rest of the time this tournament has, by all accounts, been a hoot of epic proportions. A measure of decorum is expected by your host, in honour of the fact that in its three decades this tournament has raised something like $3 million for charities such as Diabetes Awareness and the Jack Newton Junior Golf Foundation – not to mention that everyone who has ever been reckons its about the most fun you can have on two legs. The format goes a bit like this: arrive, party, golf, party, golf, party, leave. Sleep is optional.