My Journey to Lonsdale Links
I was bitten by the golfing bug in 1992 when I discovered the US Masters on TV. Amazed to see this beautiful place with an Australian at the top of the leaderboard (Craig Parry was the Australian, but it would be Fred Couples’ year), I asked Dad if we could go and play golf. My Dad agreed but imbued it with his wisdom by saying, “Are you sure? It can be a pr!ck of a game.” We went to our local public course Brighton, later that day and from that point on I was a golfer!
Brighton golf course would be a huge part of my life. I learned how to play the game there, worked in the Pro Shop as a high school student and did my PGA Traineeship there too under Gary Dixon. My connection to Gary would also lead me to working at Barnbougle Dunes when it opened in 2004 further growing my love for the game.
I returned from Tasmania to complete my traineeship at Brighton and also Sandhurst and my Business degree studies. My next stint was as the Head Professional at Riverside Golf & Tennis Centre a busy public 9 hole course with driving range. This was a great job but did not offer great work/life balance being newly married with our first son in tow. I decided to pivot into Club Management and we moved to the country where I took up the role as General Manager at Leongatha Golf Club in 2013.
In 2019 I received some information from Lonsdale Golf Club representatives about the redevelopment that the Club was undertaking and their recruitment efforts for a new General Manager. I didn’t know anything about the project, but quickly became familiar with the activities of the Club. It sounded like an exciting, once-in-a-career type of challenge that certainly piqued my interest. I applied for the role and was fortunate enough to be selected to lead the Club as its General Manager through this period of immense change. It is the first time that I have worked at a golf club where the course was actually closed!
I commenced in the winter of 2019 and played 9 holes of the old course before it closed to play for the last time on July 31st 2019. The Executive had negotiated for our Members to be able to play at Queenscliff Golf Club from August through November until the first of the new 9 holes came back online. The team took on the large and intense project of taking Lonsdale Golf Club and its Members through the redevelopment phase and into life at the new Lonsdale Links which opened in December 2020.
There were three main areas that quickly became priorities for us to ensure the future success for the Club:
2. Member consultation (Ensure that the Members are taken on the journey and improve communication)
3. Team Building (Getting great people into a much larger and diverse structure)
I will visit each of these topics in more detail in future articles.
