Bernie McGuire, TPC River Highlands, CT.

Geoff Ogilvy grew-up and honed his U.S. Open winning game at the same golf club in Melbourne that Peter Thomson was a member.

The Victoria Club is one of the courses that make-up Melbourne’s famed ‘Sandbelt’ and for a youngster born in 1977 his boyhood hero was the dashing blond-haired Greg Norman.

As Ogilvy grew older and in the mid to late 1990s when he was becoming one of Austrlia’s more-talented amateurs his heroes changed and it soon became the player he had first met at the Victoria Club many years beforehand.

And the pair of Victoria Golf Club members share something that can never be earsed and that is having their names appear on the Joe Kirkwood trophy and the prize in winning an Australian Open.  Thomson won the event three times while Ogilvy finally had his name engraved on the trophy in 2010 and 59-years after Thomson won for a first occasion.

Ogilvy is this week contesting the PGA Tour’s Travelers Championship and here in his words is a moving tribute to who he rightfully describes as Australia’s greatest-ever golfer.

Peter Thomson in 2000 and about the time Geoff Ogilvy was a young professional. (Photo – Bernie McGuire @tourmiss)

“Peter was a member of the Victoria Golf Club in Melbourne where I am grew-up and growing-up in Australia our golfing heroes were Greg Norman, Steve Elkington and the others,” said Ogilvy.

“Thommo was kind of too old to be a hero to us but then as I grew older and my golf game improved and improved I would talk to him a fair few times, and I would read what he achieved in the game and also the way he carried himself.  It was pretty obvious he was the guy that should have been our hero.

“Thommo then became my hero.

“He ws incredibly wise.  He always seemed to be in a good mood.

“He viewed golf with such a simplicity and what he couldn’t understand as why we always made the game so complicated as to him it was simply a case of tee the ball up and hit it down the fairway, smile on your way to the green and hole the putt and go to the next hole.

“To Peter there was never anything more to golf than that and I don’t know if I have ever met anyone who has viewed golf as simply as him.

Geoff Ogilvy wins the 2006 US Open to also become the second Victoria GC member to become a Major Champion.

“To be fair, in his time I don’t know if there was anyone better than him.  He was just brilliant.  He was very physically gifted and he never got in the way of that.

“He wrote articles in the newspapers while he had an apartment in St. Andrews near the 18th hole and he just loved the game so much and it seemed like he thoroughly enjoyed every minute that he had anything to do with the game.

“He was nothing more than a legend, really.

“He won five Open Championships including four in five years and that’s just amazing.

“The one black mark on his record and that was to say he was never any good competing in America but then he travelled to the States for the Seniors Tour in 1985 and won nine times in a season, and it was if to say: ‘Look you guys.  I am still better than you’ and then he kind of just went away.

“He could win virtually whereever he wanted to and he won everywhere.  Bascially, the foundation of the Asian Tour has much to do with Thommo as he was a big name when the Asian Tour was in its infantcy and he would play every single week to give the Tour credibility.

“So he was a big part in getting the Asian Tour off the ground.

“Australia’s greatest-ever golfer without any question.”