By Peter Owen
When Bob MacPherson was a 10-year-old kid growing up in Melbourne he’d spend his weekends at Peninsula Golf Club, where he’d offer his services to the members as a professional caddie.
One of his regular clients was a grouchy old man he knew only as ‘Mr Coles’.
In fact the golfer who paid young Bob a few shillings to lug his clubs around 18 holes was club president Sir George James Coles, the founder of the Coles Group of retail stores which became Australia’s largest chain store group.
And, while Bob was never the business tycoon that Sir George became, he more than matched the entrepreneur in golfing skills.
More than 70 years later Bob MacPherson is still playing golf of the highest quality. Last Monday, for example, the 83-year-old fashioned an excellent 77 at Noosa Springs, where he is both a resident and a member, to win the resort’s daily stableford competition. He scored 42 points.
He acknowledges it was a significant achievement to shoot better than his age, then says: “But, actually I’ve been beating my age since I was 68.” He says he can’t recall just how many times he’s accomplished the feat.
Bob MacPherson began playing golf as a youngster at Melbourne’s Woodlands Golf Club and was so good that he made the Victorian state team as a 17-year-old, playing off a handicap of two.
He gave the game away for many years as he found it interfered with his social life and his love of sailing, then, in the mid-1970s after relocating to the Sunshine Coast, he accepted an invitation from a friend to have a hit at Headland.
He dusted off the set of clubs he found in the cattle feed shed at his Mons Road farm, joined the club, played three rounds for handicapping purposes and was duly allotted a handicap of 17.
“The first time I played the heads came off two of my woods,” Bob said. “But, even so, I knew 17 was a bit generous. I’d been on two most of my life, but they said that was what I had to take.
“During the next six months I became the most unpopular member at Headland,” he said. “I won everything.”
During a career that was as diverse as anything he could have imagined, Bob was a farmer, a prawn fisherman, a real estate consultant and a developer. He made a killing when he developed, and later sold, the northbound BP service station at Forest Glen.
He’s continued to impress everybody with his ability on the golf course, despite not always being in the best of health.
“I haven’t been playing a whole late lately,” he said. “But, yes, that 77 last week was pretty special.”
*An A grade winner after just 18 months
Eighteen months ago, a friend invited Jamie Anderson to play a social round with him at Noosa golf course.
Though he’d not played the game before, Jamie had been a good baseball and softball player, with pretty good hand-eye coordination.He managed to make reasonable contact with a few shots.
Enough, anyway, to convince him to have a couple of lessons with coach Jimmy Douris and, ultimately, to join his mate as a member of Noosa Golf Club.
Last week he managed to sneak a rare weekday off, played with the Tuesday Club at Noosa – and shot three-over par to return 41 stableford points and win the A grade section of the competition.
Jamie, 40, had slashed his handicap from 27 to seven in about the same time it takes most of us to consistently lay club on ball or begin to figure out how to read a green.
“Yeah, I played okay,” said the modest tradie. “I putted pretty well and took the money off Dallas (former Noosa president Dallas Furner), which was the main thing.”
Jamie insists he is no ‘natural’, and that he had to work very hard to master the game so quickly.
“It took a long time for me to learn to chip, and my putting was hopeless for a long time,” he said. “But I just worked at it, and it all improved.”
*Why Sir Bob Charles likes Noosa so much
As Noosa Springs resident Geoff Saunders watched his friend Bob Charles sink a putt on the final hole of his final tournament – the 2010 Senior British Open at Carnoustie in Scotland – it dawned on him that he was witnessing the end of an extraordinary 50-year career in professional golf.
He thought Bob Charles and his half-century touring the world with his golf clubs deserved to be the subject of a book – and that he was the man to write it.
Saunders, a retired New Zealand lawyer who splits his time between Christchurch and Noosa Springs, where he has owned a villa for the past four years, has known Sir Bob since they played golf together in the 1970s.
The book project took much longer than he imagined, largely because Geoff Saunders and his law firm became heavily involved in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake.
But then COVID-19 came along, and the recently-retired Saunders and his now neighbour Sir Bob Charles found the pandemic gave them all the time they needed.
“We wrote the last 14 chapters during lockdown,” said Saunders, who hasn’t been able to get back to his Noosa Springs villa since COVID-19 broke.
Sir Bob Charles – The Biography is the first comprehensive biography of New Zealand’s greatest golfer. The book begins in working-class rural New Zealand. In 1960 he embarked upon a career that no New Zealander had chosen before, that of a full-time touring professional.Bob Charles competed in the ’golden age’ of professional golf in the 1960s and 1970s. He played with, and at times defeated, each member of the ‘Big Three’ – Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player.
His career was highlighted by a win in the 1963 British Open and he was acclaimed as the world’s best putter. His senior career delivered another 20 years of success in the game he loved.Sir Bob Charles – he was knighted in 1999 – loves visiting Noosa, and always plays a round or two at Noosa Springs, often in the company of one or more of the resort’s outstanding juniors. The last time he played, he aced Noosa Springs’ eighth hole.
Saunders and Sir Bob are looking forward to getting back to Noosa early in the year when travel restrictions between Australia and New Zealand are, hopefully, relaxed.
Signed copies of Geoff Saunders book, Sir Bob Charles – The Biography, will soon be available at the Noosa Springs Golf Shop. Sunshine Coast residents can also buy a copy, with a discounted freight charge, by going to www.bobcharlesbook.co.nz.
*Renos won’t stop play
In a bid to accommodate more golfers seeking to play at a time when some Sunshine Coast clubs shut down briefly for course maintenance, Noosa Springs has opted for a minimal summer renovation this year.
Executive general manager Mark Brady said the greens and fairways underwent a very light treatment on Monday, and would be back to normal within a day or two.
He reminded visitors that the resort offered a reduced rate for local golfers on Tuesdays and Sundays – $79 instead of the usual $125 green fee.
*Club competitions
NOOSA
Monday, 18 JanuaryWomen’s stableford: A grade – Rungratree Cox 35, Narelle Cook 33; B grade – Joy Lewis 35, Jillian Yeatman 33. Rundown to 28. Women’s 9-hole stableford: Barb Allen 18, Diane Porter 16c/b, Margaret Rickard 16.
Tuesday, 19 January
Men’s stableford: A grade – James Anderson 41, Bruce Blakemore 38, Darren Weatherby-Blythe 37c/b, Greg Collins 37c/b; B grade – Anthony Jedynak 39, Donald O’Donnell 36c/b, Michael Jedynak 36, Bob Cox 35c/b; C grade – Colin White 37, Kevin Richter 33, Greg Kuch 32c/b, Shaun O’Brien 32c/b. Rundown to 33c/b.Wednesday, 20 January
Vets single stableford: A grade – Bruce Blakemore 37, Wayne Raison 36c/b, Dennis Wills 36; B grade – Shane Rayner 40, Mark Chandler 38, Ted Burgess 36; C grade – Denis Doyle 34c/b, Martin Taylor 34, John Dunn 33. Rundown to 31c/b.
Saturday, 23 January
Men’s 2-vall aggregate: Graeme Brown & Peter Gilligan 75, Graeme Caffyn & Joseph Barbaro 73c/b, Shane Dunning & Chris Rowlinson 73. Rundown to 65c/b. NOOSA SPRINGS
Monday, 18 January
Men’s stableford: Bob MacPherson 42, Bob Layton 36c/b, Jeff Forbes 36c/b; women’s stableford: Claudia Cohn 37, Tereza Holley 36c/b, Rosie Randall 36c/b.Tuesday, 19 January
Men’s stableford: Ken Williams 37, John Taylor 36, Lachlan Collins 35; women’s stableford: Elizabeth Wadsworth 30, Kate Royal 26, Joan Fitzsimmons 25.
Wednesday, 20 JanuaryMen’s stableford: Paul Grant 40, Jeff Forbes 37c/b, Will Costin 37c/b; women’s stableford: Anne Smith 37, Jenny Hickey 35c/b, Lorna Gibson 35c/b.Saturday, 23 January
Men’s stableford: Chris Collinge 41, Peter Butt 40c/b, David Wood 40; women’s stableford: Diana Banks 40, Rosie Randall 39c/b, Jenny Hickey 39.
COOROY
Wednesday, 20 January
Vets stableford: A grade – Brett LeMoy 36, Kerry Davies 34, Greg Michael 33; B grade – Matt Saunders 35, Bruce Wilshire 32, Ron Blount 31; C grade – Larry McErvale 39, Michael Hill 36, Glen Johnstone 27. Rundown to 27.
Thursday, 21 January
Women’s stableford: Fay Wiggins 29c/b, Aileen Morton 29c/b, Kate Sawrey 29c/b.
Friday, 22 January
Coopers Challenge, stableford: P. Carroll 39, M. Davies 35.
