Golf: Master's open secret - love of the game

9 Jan, 2002 12:46 PM2 mins to read

By Sir TERRY McLEAN

Will any youngster playing in the New Zealand Open golf tournament still be competing in the event 47 years from now?

The question arises because that is the remarkable record of Sir Bob Charles, who won the championship as a 17-year-old at Heretaunga in 1954 and who has been a consistent competitor in the tournament ever since.

His love of the game has never wavered since that wonderful day at Heretaunga when he headed off the two Australians, Peter Thomson (winner of five British Open titles), and a youngster, Bruce Crampton, who won millions on the US PGA Tour proper.

When, six years later, Charles decided to give up a career as a bank clerk, he borrowed £400 from his father Ivor - also a left-hander playing on a 1 handicap and who, incidentally, celebrated his 92nd birthday a few days before Christmas - on the understanding that, if his game was not good enough, he would chuck it in.

The £400 was never touched. It was not too long before "Charley" won the first of his 75 tournament victories around the world.

He approaches Paraparaumu wondering whether the par-4 holes will be sufficiently long to trouble the phenomenal Tiger Woods.

"I can't help thinking," he says with typical dry wit, "that Tiger may be chipping back to the holes rather than up to them."

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