Doug Leng-Ward: A master on and off the turfs

Doug Leng-Ward was a lean, commanding figure when he rose to speak, whether it be on turf, bowls or golf. A carton of his memorabilia came my way and it revealed the imprint he left on the green swards of Manawatū ’s sporting landscape.

He died in 2004 aged 81 and, although born in deepest Southland in 1922, the son of a Sandhurst British army officer, he spent most of his time in Manawatū and his early days in Shannon, his mother’s home town.

While a champion golfer and bowler, for more than 30 years he was a golf administrator at club, district and NZ Golf Association level, and for 15 years he was with the NZ Turf Culture Institute committee and as its president and director.

Leng-Ward became an expert in cultivating turf for bowling greens and golf courses, also forging a reputation as a golf course architect.

After attending Shannon Primary School in the 1930s and Palmerston North Boys’ High

School, he spent three years as a

Manawatū Evening Standard cadet reporter and was later golf columnist Nuddashot. After his World War II army service on the home front, he returned to civvy street as a Farmers’ Mutual clerk, before spending 15 years with St James’ Tobacco Company and 17 years with

Formica NZ Ltd until 1980.

Only then did he become the fulltime director at the Turf Institute. He laboriously designed the Rangatira golf course on State Highway 1 north of Hunterville in 1972 and the same year redesigned the Hawkestone course when it went to 18 holes.

Rangatira conferred life membership on him, as did the Manawatū -Wanganui Golf Association in 1996.

The Waahi Taakaro course near Nelson was his work too, in 1977. A decade earlier he had spent many hours travelling to redesign the Taihape course after a new section of state highway ploughed through it.

A Taihape statement read: ‘‘Suddenly there were 200 golf course architects in Taihape’’, so Leng-Ward was called in. When staying at the Otaihape Club there, his snooker prowess proved equal to his golf.

He began playing golf at the Buckley club near Shannon in 1933 as an 11-year-old and in 1940 joined the Manawatū Golf Club, where he was club captain in 1950-51.

At the time he was in camp in the army while playing off a 4 handicap out of Shandon in Wellington. A fluent stylist, he was a tough match-player, with plenty of length off the tee and expert around the greens.

In the 1950s, Manawatū -Wanganui’s crackerjack golf teams won the Freyberg Rosebowl four times and Leng-Ward featured in three of them. Twice he was runner-up in the Manawatū club championship before breaking through to win after the war, in 1947, and again in 1955.

Many players have flitted between the Manawatū and Palmerston North clubs, including Leng-Ward. In the 1950s he left over ‘‘a point of principle’’ and went on to be Palmerston North club president from 1968 to 1970. He altered the course layout and introduced automatic watering.

He served two terms as Manawatū -Wanganui Golf Association president and was the rep selector, only to lose his seat in 1984. The apologetic secretary described the ousting as ‘‘ignorance of the management committee nomination system’’.

Because of his turf expertise Leng-Ward was known ‘‘as the right man in the right place at the right time’’. When elevated to the NZ Golf Council aged 54, he was always pressing for courses to be upgraded, but became unpopular in campaigning for junior golf.

As most did at the time when weekends were free, he played many sports. He took up bowls at Shannon in 1947 after being beset by a respiratory illness.

As a lawn bowler he was a Manawatū bowls representative in the 1960s, usually as a skip in the fours playing out of the Palmerston North Bowling Club, which he joined in 1951 when it was in Taonui St. He played on many winning Manawatū centre title teams.

In making a speech in 1964 when third in the prestigious Taranaki fours, which he played for 28 years, he thanked ‘‘my two jockeys’’, the illustrious Billy Broughton and Vic Sellars.

From the 70s Leng-Ward was the Palmerston North Bowling Club’s greens superintendent and travelled to other districts advising greenkeepers.

He was a survivor. One newspaper cutting described how his car, ‘‘a large English make’’, collided with a stray horse at Raukawa Rd near Palmerston North. The horse was killed, but LengWard received only cuts to his hands when the windscreen smashed.