THE #PUBLICGOLF REVOLUTION
Sandy Jamieson wants non-golfers to understand the importance of public golf courses.
My father got his start playing public golf in the north of Sydney, hanging his head out of the bus window so his friend could see he was aboard, both with clubs in tow to head for a game.
Eventually moving to a private club, when it came time for children, his golf dwindled, until I took it up in earnest.
Despite his membership, my early golf was exclusively played on the public tracks of Sydney.
Those days on patchy but fun public golf courses spawned a love of the game that turned into jobs in varied segments of the game.
And my golf origin story is not unique, with the majority of this country’s top players, club professionals and everyday golfers emerging from the breeding ground that is public golf.
Plenty of the aforementioned golfers have been encouraged to share their own story on social media with #publicgolf by Sandy Jamieson, professional at Oakleigh Golf Club in Melbourne.
Why?
It’s simple … to highlight the importance of the pay for play variant of the game to those
who have attacked courses like Moore Park in Sydney in the search for open green space.
Jamieson wasn’t the creator of #publicgolf, in fact he credits Golf Australia magazine’s Rod Morri, but he has unquestionably been the driving force behind its worldwide spread with his Twitter introductions of visitors to Oakleigh and the varied reasons public golf is important to them.
The hashtag has gone global, with posts on social media from all over the world highlighting the joys of playing the game in its simplest form and the mental and physical health benefits it creates.
Jamieson, the inventor of the 1Club concept previously covered in this publication which makes starting golf affordable and easy, has also encouraged his fellow golfers who got their start in the public game to share their story.
“The #publicgolf isn’t anybody’s. Yes, Rod came up with it and I have been running with it, but I want other people to use it on their socials so that other golfers start putting it out there what public golf is about and it then reaches people who don’t play golf,” Jamieson said. “That’s the power of it. If you can influence golfers to start telling the story so non-golfing networks can realise anyone can play golf.”
Major champion Hannah Green was one to post a photo of herself and her father at Hillview Golf Club in Western Australia, where she got her start in the game.
Another of our own, Mike Clayton, acknowledging his beginnings of green fee golf at a public access facility, Vic Open winner Matt Griffin too, golf industry workers and many more.
The power of social media to push the message of the importance of public golf is more important now than ever before, with courses under threat in every major city of Australia.
Arguably the Harbour City’s busiest golf venue, Moore Park has been a target for Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore for years as she looks to create more open green space to accommodate the residents of the high-rise apartment towers constantly popping up in the surrounding areas.
Golf ’s confirmed boom in the COVID era, means it is not unusual to stand and wait for a bay on Moore Park’s three-tiered driving range on a cold winter night, highlighting the popularity of the game.
And the Moore Park situation is one of the main drivers behind Jamieson’s crusade to save the game at its grassroots level.
“The tweets that I put out there were really born out of frustration at Clover Moore, newspaper columnists Jenna Price and Nikki Gemmell, even though that is a Sydney thing as it relates to Moore Park, it is an Australiawide thing,” he said. “Down here in Victoria we lost Elsternwick, there is a lot of public courses under threat.
“Public golf is not rich, public golf is not white, public golf is not exclusive. In fact, the people who play public golf are often the opposite of those things.”
The tweets Jamieson, a former coach to Robert Allenby and Jarrod Lyle, mentions
PUBLIC GOLF IS NOT RICH, PUBLIC GOLF IS NOT WHITE, PUBLIC GOLF IS NOT EXCLUSIVE ... PEOPLE WHO PLAY PUBLIC GOLF ARE OFTEN THE OPPOSITE OF THOSE THINGS.”
include the varied golfers who make their way to Oakleigh for a hit. From young kids out for a hit with mum, dad or a grandparent, to pensioners approaching three digits, the diversity of Oakleigh’s clientele discredits the regularly spouted nonsense that golf is for rich, white men by the game’s opposition.
Of course, private golf is a different animal when it comes to the threat of outsiders and the make-up of its membership. But as Jamieson notes, the public game is of vital importance to the private sector.
“Public golf needs to be healthy for the game to have a future. I call public golf the estuary of the game, but it is also the canary in the mineshaft. If public golf starts dropping off that should be massive warning to private golf.
“If you went into the private clubs surrounding Moore Park and asked everyone to put their hand up who started at public golf courses, numbers would be huge. So, without public golf, private golf is in a spiral downwards, or private golf becomes less exclusive because they are going to have
– PGA PRO SANDY JAMIESON.
welcome more new golfers. And new golfers on top-end private golf courses doesn’t make sense because the courses are too hard. It is like putting a new driver in an F1 car.”
The importance of public golf and its value to a wider audience is something that became even clearer for Jamieson upon leaving coaching at a private club to expand his business.
The Victorian got his start in public golf at Wattle Park, the same nursery of David Graham and numerous other good players, and having taken over at Oakleigh where numbers had dwindled significantly, has seen a rise in golfers in general, but some of the key areas of diversity if the game is to continue to grow and hold the Clover Moore’s of the world at bay.
“If you look at statistics for women who play golf the numbers have dropped significantly on a whole, however those figures are taken from private golf clubs with a focus on competition. My numbers at Oakleigh are more like 30 percent women.
“For the people who want to enjoy golf as a non-competitive activity for exercise and social environment, private golf isn’t really for them because it is so competition based. For the people who aren’t interested in competition who want the other benefits, private golf can be o putting, whereas public golf is a case of consuming golf how they choose without having a culture put on them.
“It is far more diverse, one of the things in Australia and our multiculturalism, there is a lot of people who have moved here within one or two generations and the only way to get into a private club is to have proposers and seconders, most of those have known that person for generations through schools or whatever it may be. So public golf is far more accessible.”
As Jamieson says, talking to golfers about the importance of public golf is like preaching to the converted. But, in some cases, reminding golfers who have moved on from the kind of golf course where the only barrier to entry is paying a green fee is important.
And it is why the championing of the cause is of the upmost importance, and the use of #publicgolf is one area where every single person can make a dierence.
The assumption that golf has always been around and always will be, lacks foresight when considering the power of people like Moore, and journalists Gemmell and Price to influence public opinion that the public game takes valuable space and resources when there is private clubs galore for the small numbers of golfers.
Publications like our own have a responsibility to spread the message but so does every golfer, and with people like Sandy Jamieson pushing the cause the game is in a good place.
And when heading to public golf, or introducing friends to the game for the first time, we could all do well to follow Jamieson’s simple rules.
“You have to be safe, play at the right speed, have some concept of your ability and look after the golf course. Then you are eectively a good golfer.”