KEY POINTS:
They put on a great show for Ted MacDougall at Mangawhai over Labour Weekend. The 70-year-old, still one of the top 10 golfers this country's ever had, was the subject of a This is Your Life-style tribute after he retired as the club's professional.
The MacDougall story is fascinating because while he's among New Zealand's best amateur players ever, his brief career as a playing professional in 1959 and 1960 suggests he could have been a truly world-class player and enjoyed similar success to his contemporary Bob Charles.
Big Ted came here from Scotland with his family as a 14-year-old in 1952 and won his first national amateur championship in 1957.
He was part of the New Zealand team that so very nearly took the first ever Eisenhower Trophy in 1958. They were third-round leaders, thanks to MacDougall's 72 on the Old Course at St Andrews but, while he finished a demanding final day with 75, his colleagues all had a nightmare (Charles had 40 putts in an 81) and New Zealand finished three shots behind winners, the USA.
MacDougall was the first of the team to turn professional. He had an arrangement with the Wisemans chain of sports stores; he could play tournaments, sell clubs and coach.
He was going well, winning five events, doing some coaching and getting a cut on each set of clubs he sold, plus a salary. He won over £600 in prize money - decent money for the time - but Wisemans was taken over and Ted's deal came to an end.
With a wife and young children, Ted didn't think he could make enough to support his family as a player in New Zealand, and he didn't have the resources to play overseas.
Reluctantly he went back to the amateur ranks, where for most of the next 25 years he remained among the best in the country.
There was another New Zealand amateur title in 1970, a place in the New Zealand team through until the 1976 Eisenhower Trophy and Auckland and other provincial titles until as recently as 1986.
Those are the tangible results. What they don't tell is the huge impression this big, friendly bear of a man left on the golfers who played with him, watched him or just enjoyed his company.
As befitting a big man, he hit booming drives but it was the precision of his iron play that left an impression on his playing partners.
He always played the 19th hole pretty well too.
A story was told at Mangawhai about how once, in Hamilton, he arrived at golf on a Sunday morning without his clubs or shoes. He borrowed a hire set from the pro shop, helped himself to some shoes in the locker room, took a ball from one of his playing partners - and then shot 66!
MacDougall had his brushes with controversy too. The New Zealand PGA wasn't going to let him play an event at Maungakiekie in 1959 because he hadn't done the necessary training. The tournament sponsor, Drysdale Ales, stepped in and said if MacDougall didn't play, the sponsorship would be withdrawn.
He played - and he won.
Considering the disagreement Greg Turner is having with the New Zealand PGA today, it makes you wonder how much has changed in 50 years.
MacDougall went back to the golf professional's life at the quickly growing Mangawhai Golf Club in 1995. They loved him, despite the chaos he could cause on a busy club day chatting to everyone who came in the shop.
This genial giant is one of the greats of the New Zealand game. One of life's imponderables is how good he might have been on the world stage if circumstances had been different.
