Читать книгу David Graham - Russell James - Страница 11

Three decades later David Graham had clear memories of his first week at Riversdale Golf Club. “The first person who ever significantly impacted on my life, bless his heart, was the professional at Riversdale, George Naismith. He was just a wonderful gentleman. He won the Australian Open in 1937. Peter Thomson also did his apprenticeship under Mr Naismith.”

“At the start of the May school holidays, and a week short of my fourteenth birthday, I went over there and he gave me a job for the rest of the school holidays, a trial run, as it were. I showed up the next morning and he told me “You have to go home, young fellow, and put on a tie.” He was very old school. My first day on the job, he started me taking apart rusty pull-carts and sanding the paint off them. There were about 70 of them and it took me forever.”

In 1948, when Peter Thomson decided to turn professional, he had to serve, like everyone else, a three-year apprenticeship with an accredited PGA professional. Australia’s leading golfer at the time, Norman Von Nida, strongly advised Thomson to start his training with George Naismith at Riversdale Golf Club. It didn’t take long for Thomson to be deeply impressed by Naismith’s methods and thoughtful manner. “George Naismith was as big an influence on my career as anybody,” he says. “He was a most generous and likeable man who always had a smile on his face.” There can be no underestimating Naismith’s contribution to Thomson’s career. He helped shape the lad’s future by allowing him to compete overseas whilst still an assistant. Many claimed Naismith gave Thomson too much latitude but Naismith was a shrewd judge and realised his assistant was unique.

Several years later when another gifted youngster came to work for him, he reacted in the same supportive and encouraging manner. David Graham said of George, “He was one of the very, very special people of this world. I spent about four years with him and one of his strong points was that he was able to detect skill in a young player and, more importantly, teach that player manners and how to grow up right. Peter and I were both very fortunate to have a deep association with him in the early stages of our careers. We couldn’t have had a better boss.” “There (at Riversdale) I worked like a slave, taking only one day off every two weeks. I often worked twelve hours a day, doing every odd job you can think of. My salary was eight pounds (AU$16) a week.”

David devoted every free moment he had to practising. Between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, when he wasn’t working around the club, he was out on the range hitting balls. “I would hit them and pick them up, hit them and pick them up, until it was too dark to see. “Sometimes”, he reflected, “I would sleep on the sofa in the pro-shop instead of going home.”

Because his home environment wasn’t very happy, Riversdale became David Graham’s refuge. “It was a nice club,” he said in 1988. “I had to wear a collar and tie and be on my best behaviour at all times. I was young and, socially, quite green. On occasions I would call a member by his wrong name and get in trouble for it, but Mr Naismith was always there to bail me out. There is no question, that if it weren’t for his help, I would have become a juvenile delinquent. I had no friends my own age and, hence, none of the companionship that is so important to young teenagers.”

* * *

David played left-handed in those early days at Riversdale, unbeknown to George Naismith. But twelve months or so into his traineeship this was all about to change. He explained his switch thus. “Mr Naismith didn’t know I was playing left-handed because as trainees we weren’t even allowed out on the golf course until late at night. After I had been working there for about a year he stopped his car on the way home beside the driving range. He got out of his car and watched me hit a couple of 2-wood shots. They went all right but he asked me what was my strongest hand. I told him it was my right hand. It was explained to me that the strongest hand needs to be on the bottom of the club not on the top as it was with my left-handed grip. It was that night on the practice tee that Mr Naismith told me that I must change to playing right-handed. “Go build yourself some right-handed clubs in the shop,” he told me, “practise with them and I will check you again in six months.” “He then scratched an arc in the patchy grass on the practice tee. It was to indicate the plane of the take-away, and the follow-through after impact, of my ‘new’ right-handed swing. I didn’t argue, after all he was the boss! I just said OK. As I slowly learned to play right-handed I practised even harder. I didn’t play a competitive round for nearly a year and it was at least eighteen months before I won anything competing against the other assistants and playing right-handed.”

Although he switched from left to right-handed, David Graham still preferred to putt left-handed. One evening when it got too dark to hit balls on the practice fairway, he went to the practice putting green in front of the clubhouse. He had been there only a few minutes when George came over to him from the adjacent pro-shop. David thought Naismith had already left to drive home. Actually George had forgotten something and had returned to get it. Naismith was not impressed with David’s left-handed putting and told him in no uncertain terms that David was to do everything on the golf course right-handed.

This message, it would seem, needed to be repeated before it sank in. John Montague lived near David Graham and had been a junior member with David at Wattle Park. John also went to Riversdale, as a junior member, a year or so after David started his apprenticeship there. The two boys would often practise their putting together late in the afternoon on the practice green in front of the clubhouse. John recalls one such session being suddenly interrupted by the loud cry of ‘here David catch this’. David barely had time to reach out with his hand and grab the golf club that George had tossed in his direction. He did catch the club and with his right hand. Pointing to it, George reminded his young apprentice, “That’s why I told you to do everything on the golf course right-handed, and that includes putting!”

* * *

Three well known Melbourne identities also have distinct memories of a young David Graham ‘serving his time’ at Riversdale Golf Club.

Bill Barrot, the brilliant centreman for Richmond (Australian Rules) Football Club was, as a youth, a caddy at Riversdale. He was also keen to leave school to get a job and had his eyes on an apprenticeship under George Naismith. Somewhat annoyed at missing out on the job and, soon after, at David Graham’s insistence that Barrot couldn’t use the practice fairway until after four o’clock in the afternoon, young Bill ‘dropped’ Graham with a straight left through an open side window of the pro-shop. The great irony of Graham getting the apprenticeship over Barrot is that Naismith was a fanatical one-eyed supporter of the Richmond Tigers. Little did George know then that David Graham would go on to win two majors while ‘bustling Billy Barrot’ would help his beloved Tigers win two premierships and represent Victoria eleven times during an illustrious football career.

Lindsay Gitsham, a trainee in the same year as David Graham, (and later the professional at Kingston Heath) remembers picking up David and another trainee in his car for a couple of rounds one Monday at Woodlands Golf Club. The idea was to play 18 holes in the morning, have a sandwich for lunch, and play another 18 holes in the afternoon. On the first hole in the morning David had a double bogey 6 and promptly retired to the practice fairway. The other two completed their 18 holes, had some lunch, and were joined at the last minute by David to play a second 18 holes. “Again David had a six on the first hole and again he stomped off to the practice fairway. After finishing our second 18 we signalled to David that we were leaving to drive home.” David was still on the practice range. To their surprise he yelled back for them to go without him as he “needed to continue with his practice.” Lindsay found out later that David had stayed on the practice fairway until darkness set in. Then, and only then, he lugged his golf bag over his shoulder and hitchhiked home all the way to Glen Waverley.

Ranald Macdonald, the great-grandson of the legendary Australian newspaperman, David Syme, and himself the Managing Director of The Age at only 26 years of age, played regularly at Riversdale in the early 1960s with David Graham.

In an interview for Golf Victoria magazine (April 2010), Macdonald acknowledged that back then he didn’t detect in Graham the player who would become a two time major champion. “Rather immodestly”, he remembered, “I felt I was a better chipper and putter than he was. We’d play for a few dollars. He was a young man of few words but always a delight to play with.” Indeed Macdonald shared “a common ground” with Graham, having also switched from playing golf left-handed to right-handed as a youngster.

The author’s first encounter with David Graham was a few months after David had started his apprenticeship with George Naismith. It was at the Victorian Boys Championship, played that year at Riversdale. In the locker room of the Riversdale club house there was a full size billiard table which proved to be very popular with some of the boys on completion of their rounds. On the first day of competition I watched as a young David Graham ‘took on’ a couple of the amateurs in a game of snooker. His challenge to them lasted only three or four minutes. The stern voice of George Naismith rang out from the doorway leaving no doubt that David’s game was over. “Put the cue back in the rack laddie,” instructed George, “you still have work to do in the pro shop.” Without a word Graham beat a hasty retreat to the workbench.

George Naismith certainly worked the boy non-stop during the early years of his apprenticeship, giving him every job he could. Sometimes David would return home so tired he couldn’t eat his dinner. He would fall on his bed and go to sleep fully clothed. He had one day off a week and on that day he would still get up at 6am and play golf all day. With long hours day after day and no weekends off, it seemed such a hard life for someone so young. His mother noted that “The more tired he was, the more determined to stick it out he became. Over time I began to see the wisdom behind this training”, she said. “If his determination and ambition was to be broken it was better to do it then and let him pursue some other occupation before it was too late.”

In the latter years of his apprenticeship, and early on as an assistant professional, he suffered for his outspoken ambition. He would tell everyone what he was going to do, only to be answered with laughter or ridicule. He withdrew more and more into a world of his own. He was labelled ‘a loner’. He would see other assistants have late nights, skip practice, have a few drinks, but that path was not for him. He became even more determined. Frequently he would say to his mother “I’ll show all of them one day, just wait and see.”

When David went off to play in the assistants’ competitions, usually on a Monday, with “a clean shirt and a bag almost as big as himself,” Patricia Graham would send him out the front door with a “good luck Joe.” According to her, it was something that stuck throughout the years. “Much later in America, his little son Andrew would say the same thing on the first morning of a tournament.”

Following David Graham’s first win playing as a right-hander, there was a period of renewed confidence in his golf game. Several more Monday competition wins came his way, and with it, his first mention in a newspaper article. His mother remembered the morning well.

“A few months later he was interviewed by Judy Joy Davies from ‘The Sun’ newspaper. When it arrived in the paper box the next morning I grabbed it out of the box and sat on the bed just staring at it. The heading said it all, ‘Young Man With Drive’. To me one sentence in the back page article stood out. ‘George Naismith is predicting that within a few years the youngster will be Victoria’s top professional and George should know.’”

* * *

In 1962 David turned 16 years of age. It was a significant milestone for him in more ways than one. He was at that stage, the youngest ever in Victoria to be admitted to the PGA as a full professional. To celebrate this achievement the boss shouted him a trip to play in the Australian Open Championship in Adelaide, South Australia. He was looking forward to his first aeroplane flight, but after much discussion agreed to his mother’s pleas to go by train. At the same time David made her realise that “plane trips, and plenty of them, were in the future” and there would be “no time to mess about,” as he put it.

The plan was for Patricia not to go to Spencer Street Railway Station to see him depart. But, as it was his first trip away, at “the last minute I decided to go to the station and see David off. When I reached the platform the train was about to leave. I managed to find David in his compartment just as the train started to slowly move off. It was then that the ‘Mum’ in me really took over. I yelled out ‘did you pack some spare underpants?’ to his great embarrassment.”

Soon after David won the 1977 Australian Open at the Australian Golf Club in Sydney, a young member from Riversdale telephoned Patricia to say how pleased he was with David’s win because he remembered when David had played in that 1962 Open. He told her he was on the practice fairway at Riversdale when David came back from his first Open experience. Evidently he was dragging his overnight bag and golf bag up the long driveway from the front entrance to the clubhouse and pro-shop looking quite disconsolate. Patricia found out later that when he got to the pro-shop he said to George Naismith “Sorry Boss, I didn’t do too well for you, but I promise I’ll win it for you one day.” Fifteen years later he kept his promise.