Broken bones fail to keep pair off course
Some people are just plain indestructible. Peter Creighton is one of those, a former Manawatu¯ golfer who defied a truckload of injuries and ailments to go on and represent New Zealand. Born in Taihape in 1938, he is now 80 and still golfing at Middlemore, on the golf course now known venerably as Royal Auckland and Grange. There he regularly beats his age in Bob Charles fashion, shooting in the mid-to-high 70s and allowing himself the luxury of a golf cart now his legs can’t cope.
As a child he suffered severe bronchitis and hay fever, pleurisy, scarlet fever, whooping cough and he broke arms. In a motorbike crash in 1957 he broke his wrist. He also broke ribs and broke his foot in a lawn-mower accident. In 1966, he broke two vertebrae in his back and tore three ribs off his spine when he crashed his car on Desert Road ice.
In his early days he wondered if he’d make 21. He now lists those years as his ‘‘growing pains’’.
At Hokowhitu in 1956, his arm was in plaster, so he caddied for Australian great Peter Thomson.
Creighton went on to make his mark in life, not only as a banker for 37 years – he also won nine club championships at six clubs, played for six provinces and won five national interprovincials, both understood to be records. For all players who have played more than 100 interprovincial games, Creighton boasts the best winning margin. He set a course record 69 at Hokowhitu in 1956 as an 18-year-old and beat Manawatu¯ legend Ken Glendinning in the 1958 club final.
Creighton attended Palmerston North Boys’ High School and was a bit of a weed, so he walked or ran to the YMCA and trained for two hours every night to build up his health and physique.
While rugby was compulsory at Boys’ High, Creighton also represented Manawatu¯ at gymnastics and was in the cricket first XI. He graduated to the Manawatu¯ Hawke Cup team, where fearsome Boys’ High teacher Ian Colquhoun was the New Zealand wicketkeeper and Creighton would bowl to him for practice, probably, he said, more for Colquhoun’s benefit.
Later, when both played golf at Paraparaumu Beach, he found Colquhoun most amenable.
Creighton got his New Zealand blazer at the Commonwealth tourney at Royal Sydney in 1963 and was a reserve at Middlemore nine years later. In 1979, he won the Fiji Open from a young Vijay Singh and was the first amateur winner since Bob Charles won the NZ Open in 1954. A year later, he returned to defend his Fiji title, but he slipped in the pool and tore a neck muscle.
He has had countless surgeries since, to feet, eye, nose, spine and elbow, hernias, and after medical misadventure in 2008, he had 10 operations to save his life and to avoid having a leg amputated. Then came kidney dialysis as well as dicing with cancer, none of which have curtailed his golf.
Another survivor using up lives is golfer and Palmerston North civil engineer Peter Clark. This year he went to Sweden to drive Audis on frozen lakes and one evening he tried snowmobiles. In the dark he and his wife Frances collided. She was knocked out and broke ribs and he still has plates in an elbow.
Peter’s first crash a few years back came while biking the Otago Rail Trail: rain obscured his view of a bridge. He flew over the handlebars, landed on the cattle stop and was jammed under the bike for 20 minutes with shoulder damage. Then, in Rome, his train came to a stop at a station but the next one didn’t. Luckily he was in the front carriage and emerged with broken ribs. Others were killed. While biking in the hills of rural Victoria in 2016, he crashed, breaking a leg.
There’s more. Around Regensburg in Germany last year, there was blood everywhere when Clark crashed while biking on sharp cobblestones and struck a kerb, broke ribs and ripped the palms of his hands.
Now the irrepressible Clarks are booked for Morocco next year and the trip includes golfing and camel riding. Watch this space. Their travel insurance is called an ‘‘adventure package’’.