Saturday night, 19th March, 1988 …

The NSW State Election is won by the Liberal/National coalition led by Nick Greiner winning 59 seats compared to 43 seats to the Labour Party headed by then Premier Barry Unsworth.

Twelve years of Labour rule had come to an abupt end.  After six years savouring the best job I could have imagined, I am now technically out of work but alas, and sadly unlike a few on Treasurer Ken Booth’s staff, I was still an employee of the Premier’s Department and back to the department I would go.

I had been seconded to the Premier’s Department in 1982 to work on the personal staff of the then Premier Neville Wran MP, QC.

See – http://www.golfbytourmiss.com/2020/10/bernies-tales-on-tour-chapter-1-how-it-all-began-part-1/

The next day, Sunday, 20th March was the final round of the Australian PGA Championship at Riverside Oaks, and the newly-opened golf course to the west of Sydney was hosting the first of three Australian PGA titles.   Wayne Grady and Greg Norman finished tied at 13-under par with Grady winning with a par at the fourth extra hole. It was the second of three Australasian Tour wins for ‘Grades’ as he would also capture the 1991 Australian PGA Championship.

Sometime during that final round I found my way to the exhibition area of the Riverside Oaks tournament.

What I would do there in the exhibition area would the next day alter my life and change my career forever, and all I did was to fill-out a promotion coupon and drop into the entry box.

The next day I jumped on the bus to head into Sydney and face the sad task in returning to the Government Office Block and sifting through so many years of Treasurer Booth’s private papers, documents and personal affects.  Suffice to say, the shredding machine was going non-stop ahead of the winning Liberal government moving into the offices on the Thursday,

But then there was a phone call around 11am that Monday morning.

“Hello, Mr. McGuire.  This is ‘so-and-so’ from the Daily Telegraph.  You have won first prize in the Riverside Oaks promotion.  Is if fine with you if we could send around one of photographers for a photograph?”

Wow!  What a surprise.  The surprise of all surprises.

Having broken-up some months earlier with my first wife, I thought who do I call.  I called my brother, Steve.

“Steve?” I said.  “What are you doing on Wednesday?”  Steve responded:  “Why? Working, of course”.

“I’ve just won two return Business Class air tickets to attend the Players Championship in Florida.  Do you want to come with me?”

I said my goodbyes to the Treasurer, his wife and my workmates late on Tuesday after sharing in a few drinks and then jetted out of Sydney Airport the next morning.

Steve and I finally found our way to Jacksonville Airport and from where we were driven to the Sheraton Marriott at TPC Sawgrass where we were booked-in for the duration of the PGA Tour event.

As previously mentioned, I had been dabbling in photo-journalism in attending Australasian Tour events but to be now headed to a PGA Tour tournament.  Could it get any better?

I had struck-up a friendship with Danny Acret, then Editor of Australian Golf Digest and in contacting Danny, and advising him of my win, he arranged for me to obtain media accreditation to report officially on the 1988 Players Championship.

Steve and I had a wonderful time that week though we must have received a half-a-dozen or so calls to our room with people saying:  “Hi, is that you Fuzzy?”

Mark McCumber won the 1988 Players by four strokes.

After a fabulous ‘still pinching ourselves’ week along the Altantic shoreline we said farewell to Florida and stopped-off on the way home via winter-bound Cheyenne, Wyoming to spend a few days rugged-up in winter woollens with a friend of Steve’s named – Bob Budd.  He worked for the Wyoming Cattle Growers Association and was married to Cindy.  Could it have been more American?

Two years later, my still very good friend Joe Sroba and I would again stopped by Bob’s house on route to visit my parents in Maryland, as my father was then working at the Australian Embassy in Washington DC.

Joe and I, along with Bob and some of his friends, were downstairs that Monday night December 8th, 1980 in the warmth of his basement watching an NFL game and sinking a few a beers when the phone rang.  It was one of Bob’s friends who worked at a local Cheyenne radio station with news John Lennon had been shot and killed in New York.

It was a night I can still vividly recall to this day.

So, back to that visit in 1988 and we said goodbye to the Budd’s and while my brother headed home, I made my way to California to attend the 1988 US 500cc Motor Cycle GP at Laguna Seca, as I was also dabbling in reporting on the championship.  Many of the European-based teams would head to Australia during the European winter, and I found a niche reporting to European motor cycle magazines on what the teams were up to while in Sydney.

One of th riders I befriended was American Kevin Schwantz, winner of the 1993 World Championship and who also loved his golf.

There’s a great story when Kevin and I had the good fortune to tee-up on the Australian Club in Sydney and how Kevin was forced into buying a pair of those awful knee-high white socks or he could not play the back nine of the course

Read – http://www.golfbytourmiss.com/2020/10/bernies-tales-on-tour-short-socks-long-socks-golfing-with-500cc-world-champ-kevin-schwantz/

I eventually arrived back into Sydney and for those few months in 1988 I found myself in limbo without a permanent position the Premier’s Department.  Life back among the ‘indians’ was all so different when you have been working for the ‘chief’.

I found myself becoming restless arriving at work each day without a clearly defined task, so I began taking extended leave without pay to travel to Europe, and I did this for a first time in mid-1989.

Why I chose Europe I am still not sure but there was many Australian golfers plying their trade on the European Tour and in 1989 there was the likes Mike Harwood, Peter Senior, Craig Parry, Rodger Davis, Brett Ogle, Peter O’Malley, Ossie Moore, Mike Clayton, Bob Shearer, Peter McWhinnery, Brad Hughes, Grady and Norman – and they were winning.

I ventured to the Italian Open, caught the train south to report on the Monte Carlo Open and then ventured to the UK for the Scottish Open and my first Open Championship in July that year when Grady and Norman made it to a play-off and though Grady should have won, he opened the door on Norman and Mark Calcavecchia.  I can still recall Norman finding the bunker down the right side of the 18th hole in the play-off at Royal Troon.

Also, that 1989 Open was a loud sounding of alarm bells for the Ping Eye 2 square grooves controversy and being  played by the American Calcavecchia.

For an Australian Calcavechhia relegated the two Aussies into second place but then I naively thought at the time, ‘How good is this?  Two Aussies in the play-off for the British Open?”

I had the good fortune also during that week at Royal Troon to meet Trevor Peake, filing for the Liverpool Echo who, and to this day, he remains a close friend living in Newton-Le-Willows near Warrington in England.

That 1989 Open Championship was the first of now 30 Open Championships (as at 2019).  I missed the 1990 Open but didn’t miss 1991 when Ian Baker-Finch was handed the Claret Jug as his then young daughter played in a bunker.  A week later, I reported on Harwood winning the European Open at Watlon Heath.

I would be at Royal St. George’s in 1993 when Gene Sarazen handed Norman his second Claret Jug.  In the crowd was Alan Border and his Ashes winning team-mates.

I think I spent about six weeks in Europe in 1989 but with each year the visits became longer and longer till I eventually tendered my resignation at the Premiers Department

Australian Associated Press (AAP) did not have a European Tour correspondent and one thing then led to another and from the early 1990s I was now virtually full-time filing to AAP.

As would happen, I struck-up friendships with those filing to UK and Irish newspapers who began asking me if I was attending ‘such-and-such’ events and in saying ‘yes’, it led to me in begin filing to UK and Irish newspapers.  At one stage, and with the advent thankfully of lap-tops, and not having to dictate to a copy-taker who could not understand my accent, I began filing to upwards of six newspapers at day while also filing copy to AAP and the New Zealand Press Association (NZP).

Newspapers included the Express (London), Daily Record (Scotland), Scottish Herald and Press and Journal (Scotland) along with the Irish Indepedent, Irish Star and Irish Examiner.  In later years, I began filing from the PGA Tour to The Sun (London) and the Telegraph (London).

The best thing about filing to UK paper was I was getting paid in Pounds Sterling.

 

I bought my first house in late 2001, paying cash, in the picturesuque fishing village of Crail in Fife, Scotland.  The very next day I joined the Crail Golfing Society, golf’s seventh oldest club.  I am still a member and undertaking media work for the club including posting daily ‘tweets’

Tying this I have attended:

30 Open Championships

26 Masters (Teed-up on Augusta National in 1998 and 2005)

14 US Opens

18 PGA Championships

3 Presidents Cup

2 Ryder Cups

I have played golf in 45 different countries while I hit the ‘official’ first golf shot on a golf course (Tonga GC) at 12 midnight on the 1st January, 2000.

And all because my name was drawn out of  box on the last day of the 1988 Australian PGA Championship.