THE WANDERING GOLFER: BRENDAN MOLONEY
MEMBERS and friends of Royal Park Golf Club in Melbourne have been collecting signatures on a petition to have the street leading into the course renamed after five-time Open champion Peter Thomson.
It is a worthy endeavour to honour the man who learnt to play on the course in the 1930s and won the club championship in 1946 but the result is not a foregone conclusion. The name change has to be approved by the Melbourne City Council and this should be a lay-down misere.
The move has the blessing of the Thomson family and you’d think that anyone who opposed it would have to be, in the words of PM Bob Hawke when we won the America’s Cup in 1983, a bum. However, you can’t trust councils. Lately this tier of government has brought down the wrath of the public for overpaying its CEOs, councillors taking junkets to exotic parts of the world, failing to provide proper garbage collection and pushing ratbag, politically correct agendas not in their job description.
Even if common sense prevails, the name change may not be seen in our lifetime. Three Lord Mayors ago, in 2006, incumbent John So held a ceremony at Royal Park and proposed that a plaque be struck to acknowledge this wonderful slice of sporting history. Thomson attended and indicated where he’d like it placed unobtrusively at the back of the 1st tee. The club is still waiting.
If this is not discouraging enough, the way ahead is rocky, as the guidelines show: “Changing road names is very difficult and is not preferred because each road name comes with its own history, and a change of name can have significant effects on property owners, occupiers and businesses.
“A proposal will only be considered when the long-term benefits to the community can be shown to outweigh any short-term effects. Therefore this will only be done in extraordinary circumstances.”
This is fair enough because society can be too quick to abandon, ignore or rewrite the record but Royal Park wants to acknowledge and celebrate history, not destroy it. In changing the name from Old Poplar Road, no trees would be killed and this particular variety, like the rabbit and the cane toad, is just another imported species and not at all endangered. There are 23 other streets, avenues, boulevards, courts, drives, lanes, roads, rises, terraces or ways in Victoria named Poplar.
Thomson, who died on June 20 last year aged 89, loved the course despite all its foibles and offered to redesign it free of charge to make it better, safer and a wonderful tourism asset on the city’s fringe. This fell on deaf ears at city hall. It is probably the only course in the world that has tram and train tracks, a road and a bicycle path running through it. His plan was to place the whole course in one paddock by relocating two holes to the other side of the railway line in a land swap with some football and cricket grounds also run by the council.
In 2014 club president Chris Meegan wrote to Lord Mayor Robert Doyle voicing safety concerns. “You wouldn’t read about it, but just after that one of the ride-on buggies was hit by a train,” he recalled. “It got stuck on the train track. Luckily the two blokes in it jumped out and were not hurt but the buggy was a complete write-off.”
Other fine players to come out of Royal Park include Mick Ryan, who played football and cricket for South Melbourne and won the Australian Open at Royal Adelaide in 1932; his cousin Gus Jackson, who went to Victoria Golf Club and was undefeated in pennant for six years except for the final game in the sixth year; and Vern Morcom, who was the course superintendent at Kingston Heath for 40 years. Morcom learnt his craft from his father, Mick, who built the West Course at Royal Melbourne with the great Scottish designer Alister Mackenzie and the East Course with Australia’s Alex Russell.
Thomson, grew up two minutes’ walk from the course and wrote in the foreword of the club’s history, A Centenary in the Park by Denise Hilton: “Forty years on from the club’s opening I took my first step onto its hallowed fairways. I held my uncle’s greyhound while he ran up the 4th fairway with a furry shape in a hessian bag. I was ordered to slip the lead when he reached the far green. The dog then took off like a shot out of a gun, leaving me to examine my surroundings. It was not long before the passion for striking a responsive, small, white ball had me hooked.”
In Scotland, the birthplace of the game where great golfers are venerated, he has been awarded honorary doctorates of law from both St Andrews and Edinburgh Universities. In America he has been inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. He is a recipient of the Order of Australia for his contribution to golf and charity and he has been honoured by the Queen with a CBE. Strangely, in Thomson’s home town of Melbourne, there is little outward sign he has done anything out of the ordinary. There is a tennis complex named after the great Queensland player, Rod Laver, and any number of plaques, statues and buildings bearing the names of footballers whose fame seldom extended across the Victorian border.
This is puzzling because he proudly called Melbourne home for nine decades. He raised his family in Melbourne and immersed himself in its business and community life. While many high profile Australians in sport, the arts, commerce and show business turn their backs on their roots for good, Thomson based his global golf course design business in Melbourne for more than 40 years, employing Australians, paying tax and exporting Australian expertise.
Let’s hope the council considers this extraordinary enough.