CLEARY: Golf addiction explained by a round on the Sandbelt

Turned up in Melbourne the day before, last Monday, and there were trees strewn across the Nepean Highway. The winds were mighty that day, my friend, serious sou-westers from the Bite and Bass Strait took rooves off houses and frightened the wearers of toupees.

Of course it didn’t stop several diggers at Victoria GC from honouring the statue of Peter Thomson and whacking it around their cracking golf course, their Hot Dots like ping pong balls fighting the draft of an F/A-18 Hornet.

Big winds, friend. So big the sirens went off at Royal Melbourne next door, and the quartets at Vic were forced back to the spike bar where they at once questioned pro shop staff, as Thommo’s statue watched on with silent admiration, when they could go out again.

The game infects us in myriad ways; is there a hobby-sport-come-recreation which so addicts its adherents? Do Scrabble people play with such madness? Can you be so addicted to ball-room dancing?

In the enigmatic ways of Melbourne Town, the wind had stopped by Tuesday morning and our quartet was greeted at Commonwealth by effectively perfect conditions – breeze but a zephyr, nudging 19 Celsius, no bother from groups before or aft.  

Commonwealth? So good. The Sandbelt’s bunkering is so very cool. That it’s cut so tightly, sharply, up against the greens … it’s like it was carved out of the terrain, as if a crack squad of artisans had piloted so many bulldozers and Bobcats, and just had their way with it.

It’s very cool bunkering. But then the whole place is cool.

I liked the pair of practice putting greens either side of the walkway into the cracking old clubhouse.

The lies around the greens are firm and tight. You can’t bomb at flags, you need to nurdle the ball up there. If you have 150 to the flag, you need your 125 club, and bounce it up there, run it, nurdle it.

It takes a bit of thinking about, which suited our man O’Hern because he’s written books about thinking about golf. It also suited our man Michel, because he’s a member at Metro nearby, and grew up nurdling his ball around these parts, and in 2019 was crowned the first international winner of the US Mid-Amateur Championship after a 2/1 win over Joseph Deraney at Colorado Golf Club.

Then he played the 2020 Masters at Augusta National, the cold Covid one in November.

Safe to say he can play. 

It also suited, mostly, three-time Melbourne Cup-winning jockey, D.Oliver, who would hit it 200-odd with driver, but who has pretty good hands around the green, eliciting a little bite and roll-out from those greens he missed, which was most of them, he being a fairly honest nine-marker coming back from a spell.

A moment of truth for Damien Oliver at Commonwealth GC. PHOTO: Matt Cleary

And onwards we rolled, with Michel and O’Hern playing off plus-4, and making it look ridiculously easy, just bombing their pills into the ether, and wafting mid- and short-irons adjacent the pins.

Michel kicked off with three one-pointers which included a par. O’Hern was similar. Both finished with par rounds and 32 points, for she’s a tough enough old handicap, +4, particuarly around a Sandbelt course that hosted the Australian Open, won by Peter Thomson, in 1967.

Meanwhile, I amassed 18 points going out and 12 points coming back because we were playing in the competition and for some reason numbers get in my head; and affect how I play, it is a Thing. And I should read O’Hern’s books, and those of Bobby Rotella, and try not to be such a fair dinkum kook.

And yet, typical of the game that has so infected me as it has the old boys at Vic GC, there were moments sublime and ridiculous.

A downhill lie from a bunker on seven begat a lightly wafted wedge and sand-save that drew actual applause from my playing partners.

Lukas Michel from the sand at Augusta National in the 2020 Masters. PHOTO: Getty Images

There followed an 8-iron on eight which soared over some trees and stiffed to 10 feet, and which counts among the greatest blind approach shots of all time given I was 155m out and had only been trying to get over the trees and lay up, and didn’t plan any of it, it was a bigger fluke than a 30-metre liver fluke.

I hit the ninth green and fashioned two putts, and Team Cleary-Michel drew level with Team O’Hern-Oliver, the left-handed Sandgropers paired randomly via the tossing of balls.

And onwards we rolled, the plus-4s playing golf, the old jockey steadily improving, and the golf journo battling mind demons which made no sense given we weren’t exactly rounding the bend at Flemington or coming into the back nine at Augusta, but rather whacking it around in a Tuesday club stableford competition.

I don’t know why it is, but it is.

Damien Oliver just misses the match-winning putt on the 18th at Commonwealth GC. PHOTO: Matt Cleary

And so! Scores tied, we came to the 18th green, and Oliver had a 15-foot sand-save to win. It looked good all the way before it slid impossibly by, and elicited the reaction above.

To decide the contest, in the ways of men, we putted from the fairway to any of the holes on the practice green. And Michel made a two, and then we drank beers, and the lefty Sandgropers paid for them.

And you wonder why the game gets under your skin.