Celebrating Greg Way: 50 Years as a Member

Joining us in 1973, Greg Way has been a Member for 50 Years. Joining us from Westward Ho as a junior and growing up on Warren Ave, Greg has been a key member of the Glenelg Golf Club. Not only a member of our Simpson Cup team in 1985, but captain of our Pennant winning team. We sat down with Greg to find out about his time at Glenelg.

How did you first become involved in golf and why did you join Glenelg?

I was playing football like most kids at school and I did my right knee and my dad, who had had some probably injuries beyond normal in football, encouraged me to start playing golf. Let’s walk it off and see if the knee improves and my golf improved quickly. I really didn’t go back to football, and I lived in Warren Avenue and Glenelg was the closest club. I’d been up here a lot as a kid collecting tortoises and throwing stones at magpies and doing all sorts of things. But I went to Westward Ho first and I had predecessors like Chris Whitford and David Threlfall who had come here. So that’s the reason that I probably started playing and chose Glenelg.

What changes have you witnessed over your time here as a Member?

Glenelg has changed a lot. As Chris said, we used to drive in a different direction to come to the club. The clubhouse has changed a lot. The course has gone much more linksy than it used to be. It’s in far better condition than it ever used to be. We’d have terrible trouble with the Greens at times, and the 17th Green was perennially out. Over the years the course has just improved out of sight. I mean there are elements to the course that I would prefer. If I didn’t hit it in some of the bushes and some of the sandy waste but I think that’s more my lack of ability than it is the course.

Can you share any memorable moments or milestones that stand out?

Oh, there are so many different things, people. There are lots of of characters that have been part and parcel of this course. One of my favorites was I didn’t play a lot on the weekends here, but during the week, during holidays, when I was at uni particularly, I would get a chance to play with the doctors group. One occasion I remember this fella called Jack Alderman, who was just a terrific bloke.

But the first time I played with him I was on the opposition pair and we got to the short par three, which now plays as the sixth green, and Jack knocked it about two feet away and I said to my partner, we should just give Jack that and walk off. He said, oh no, Jack can’t putt. He has the yips. I walked over to Jack and said, “Jack, do you have the yips?” All I noticed was my playing partners kicked up and said, oh, I wish you hadn’t said that. And he walked off with 12. And that was the really the start of him remembering that he had the yips. So, yeah, Jack was a great character in that doctor’s group who were a really interesting bunch.

One of my favorites was Dick Bennett, who he ended up caddying for me. In the later years of my Pennant Golf, and he was such an incredible advocate for this golf course. He and a group started the wine club, but everywhere we went, Dick was always promoting Glenelg and he was a wonderful advocate. John Handford was another guy that promoted junior golf in South Australia. He was actually a delegate on the SAGA (South Australian Golf Association) I think, for junior golf and from my point of view he was around when I first started playing and he was great for developing juniors at Glenelg. Eric Scovell was in charge of the Junior program, the State Junior program. When I first got into the state junior team, Eric was really one of the driving forces.

Yeah, there are so many people around and there were so many people around in those days that encouraged us as juniors to play. And then there were the players. You know, we had some fantastic players like we had Eric’s son Peter and we had the Mesnil’s and we had Graham Stevens, who was just a fantastic player and he lost a player to win the South Australian Open here and he just continually hit fairways got up and down from the ball washer.

He was just an incredible player, one of the best players we’ve ever had. So yeah, Glenelg was very lucky. When I first started here. We had two or three in the state senior team every year like Chris Whitford and Dave Threlfall and Graham [Stevens] and a whole lot of great players.

Do you have any interesting stories or anecdotes from the early days of your time here as a member?

I can remember one that always sticks in my mind. I used to play first off because we had Reg Sands used to be the team master and we’d get away before first light and what we used to do is stand on the first tee. John Tully, Bernie Manser and Chris Manser would stand on the first tee and there was a light at the end of the first fairway where a nurse used to live in that house. When she came home, if the light was just fading enough, we knew it was time that we could hit off. Sometimes that was 5:30 in the morning, so it just shows you how much things have changed in terms of when they can mow the greens, what times people can stick to. But I actually made it to one of my boys footy games at 8:45 at Hackham, having played here one morning. So I don’t imagine that is possible anymore.

How’s the club evolved since you first joined?

We’ve got a fantastic junior program. I think that part of the club is really evident and you look at the young ones that are our elite players and they’re just awesome. So I think the girls have come on. We didn’t have very many girls when I was here as a as a junior and the number of great young girls we’ve developed over the last 20 years, have been amazing. The Club itself, I mean, we’ve we had at one stage we looked at pokies as a potential revenue earner and I know it was put out just canvased amongst members and it was almost unanimous that we didn’t want to go down the lines of having a pokies arrangement in our lounge. So I’m really pleased about that because we’ve created other streams of revenue without having to go to that length. I really like the idea of it being a non pokies place.

Is there anybody specific that’s played a significant role in shaping the golf club over your time?

Yeah, I suppose those people I’ve brought I rise before like John Handford and Dick Bennett and, and the various green keepers we’ve had. It’s interesting Darrell Cahill, when he was here, he spent his whole life killing kikuyu. And when he left here, he developed a kikuyu farm and sells it. So he knew more about kikuyu than anyone else in the world. The group that worked on the kikuyu in those days, like the second fairway, was dug out so deep and yet we still found kikuyu right underneath. I guess we’ll always have a little bit of it around, but they certainly got it much more in control than they ever did before. Yeah, I really think that’s probably where we’ve come with it.

What advice would you give new members who have just joined?

I would get the smartest phone I could get with a really quick processor because the most important part of booking these days is actually being able to beat the beat the crowd at 3:00. So if you could come with a fast phone, I think you could get a pick in any group you wanted to play with. The other thing is to pick a group that doesn’t play slowly because they get sledged all the time, play with as many different groups as you can so that you get a chance to see the breadth of the Club. Because that is really one of the great things about this club is there’s so many different groups and so many different characters that you will get to meet. So that’d be my advice to them.

What are your hopes for the golf clubs future?

I would really like the course to continue to improve. I think it’s improved out of sight, but I think I’d like it to be an elite golf course but not an elitist club because there are lots of great golf courses where you don’t feel welcome when you get there. You know, the old days we used to have to put jackets on and things to walk into places. I can remember playing in events and my caddies weren’t allowed in the lounge with us, so I’d never want to see Glenelg go down that path. We probably need to continue to encourage breadth across the club. You know, lots of juniors, that middle tier of players that we lost for a while, plus us oldies, that’s really what I’d like to see because Glenelg has got a different feel to it than some of the other clubs and I’d like that to stay.

What are you most proud of of your time here?

Um, there have been a few highlights over the 50 years. I had a good run in the seventies when I first came here. We had Murray Crafter as the pro and Murray gave me a few lessons, and they always used to say to me, great hands, you’ve got great hands. Don’t worry about all the other things. You can hit a draw if you want to, but just maintain the hands. I always thought that was a good piece of advice because he gave me ways to sort of block the hook if I needed to. I won a state junior championship up at the Vines and then made it through to maybe semifinals or something like that in the state Amateur. I was playing reasonably well. Then I went overseas for a year in 1976, and I basically played golf in the UK and learned to play links courses and particularly the Irish courses. And that really helped me in good stead because when I came back in 77, I had a good year and won the amateur at Kooyonga and finished second in the amateur part of the South Australian Open at Royal Adelaide. I feel like my golf improved quite a bit in those days. I damaged my wrist the following year Tea Tree Gully in a pin up match that put me back a bit and then came back too early and did it again. So I missed nearly 12 months. Yeah, when family kicks in, that is always a test for the quality of your golf and that probably didn’t help. But I, I didn’t ever really play much golf here on Saturdays in the first half of my time. But in the second half, the last 25 years, I had a regular group on a Saturday morning where we play early. And then for the last ten or so years I’ve played with a great group, but on Saturdays with some interesting characters in Morrie Croucher as our organizer and and I really enjoy playing with the different members in that group.

I love Pennant golf. I think I played about 100 games of Pennant golf here the year we won the Simpson Cup after such a long time of not winning it in about ’85, I was captain and I think that was probably my proudest moment as a player. We got to hold that cup up after such a long time, and we’d been a bit in the wilderness for a few years before that going into that same season, and we had just recently lost seven nil to Grange. We played Grange in a final and at Grange, and we won 4-3. Billy Guy holed a real tester on the last with so many members standing around that last green. It was a fantastic feeling. Yeah, of all the things that we did in thing Pennants, that was my favorite moment.