Waipawa Golf Club to celebrate jubilee

The Waipawa Golf Club is about to celebrate 50 years on its present site. Photo / Rachel Wise

On Easter Weekend, the Waipawa Golf Club will celebrate 50 years on its current site, with a jubilee featuring members former and current, guests, a tournament, good food and many tales of golfing prowess.

But the origins of the club are further back in Waipawa’s past.

The Waipawa Golf Club began near Abbotsford in 1910, on Harry Rathbone’s property, on what’s now State Highway 2. In 1913, Sir George Hunter donated two cups - one each for the men’s and ladies’ senior championships.

Central Hawke’s Bay golfers early last century, taking a break after a round.

Later, the club moved to the Kittow property, Glentui, near Walker Road, Tamumu. Then a third course was established in 1926, at Tamumu, on council land known as River Reserve.

Names in the minutes of those times cover a range of Waipawa’s notable business owners and landowners, with office-holders including patron Sir George Hunter, president H. Rathbone, captain C. Crutchley, vice captain J. Lockhart and secretary E. Walcott.

A lot of women played golf in those early years, as it was an opportunity to socialise.

A report on the 1927 season tells of the finances of the club being “quite satisfactory’ and the committee “quite optimistic as to the coming season and feels certain that despite the pessimists, there is still a lot of enjoyment to be had out of our links if all members will do their bit”.

By the 1970s, golf was at the height of its popularity nationwide and locally. Many clubs had a waiting list for members and it cost an extra membership fee to join.

Waipawa’s players wanted a permanent site, closer to town, and the committee set to fundraising, holding stock drives and milling and treating pine blocks on farms, eventually purchasing a blackberry-and-willow covered rocky piece of land along Tapairu Road.

It was so overgrown that committee members coming to look at the land before the purchase couldn’t see each other as they walked the property.

The members rolled up their sleeves. With some providing machinery and others labour, the members windrowed and piled up the scrub and burned it.

Rumour abounds that old car bodies were used to fill up holes in the property, as well as many truckloads of sawdust and bark chips from the nearby Waipawa mill.

There were a lot of working bees. Still, club members carried a bucket when they played, to collect stones from the course, which they deposited in piles to be taken away. Irons ended up with edges like saw blades when every shot hit a stone.

In the early 1900s, Central Hawke’s Bay’s golfers toured from course to course, playing in all the clubs’ tournaments.

In those early years at the current course, players used to tee off from the stopbank. A lot of balls hit car windows as traffic travelled over the Waipawa Bridge.

The entrance to the Waipawa Golf Club was, at that stage, underneath the railway bridge where a hole had been dug so trucks could go through without touching the bridge itself.

The hole regularly filled with water, as a bus-load of lady golfers found out when they arrived and opened the luggage compartment of the bus, only to have water pour out and find all their gear drenched.

The entrance was shifted after it was declared a fire hazard - the Waipawa brigade’s fire engine couldn’t fit through the gap.

Napier professional golfer Ernie Southerden designed the Waipawa course as a 12-hole course. There was a plan as well for 18 holes but it was never used. The builder of the clubhouse was a committee member, as were the painter and decorator. There was a lot of volunteer input.

There still is. Current committee members say they still do a lot themselves - “we have to or we wouldn’t survive,” one said - and there are still a good many working bees and firewood sales.

Members from golf clubs travelled a lot, attending each club’s tournaments. There are many well-known names on the trophies in the Waipawa club’s well-stocked cabinet. Kapi Tareha was the first player to get his name on the Sir George Hunter Cup, in 1918.

This century, however, golfing has declined, nationwide, as time-strapped families with two working parents find it hard to commit to a five-hour round, not to mention a stop at the “19th hole” for refreshments and to socialise afterwards.

Younger people aren’t becoming members either - preferring to pay green fees for a round of golf with friends rather than become serious about the game.

The Waipawa Golf Club’s presidents board has some familiar local names.

Some of the Waipawa committee believe golfing hasn’t adapted quickly enough, citing a rise in nine-hole membership as proof that a shorter format may bring the players back to the fairways.

To this end, Waipawa has created a shorter course (Yellow Course) which offers a quicker game.

It also has an additional hazard - though this was not planned nor optional.

The club lost four fairways to Cyclone Gabrielle, which swept away fencing and deposited shingle on the formerly pristine course. Trees came down in the cyclone, and the long drop was washed 400 metres downstream and wedged under a tree.

It took four months to get the course back to full use, helped by a donation from Golf New Zealand and from other clubs that held tournaments and sent donations to Hawke’s Bay golf clubs.

The heart is still there though, say the committee members, and they plan to celebrate that at the 50th Jubilee on March 31, when members, past members and guests will tee off at 3pm, play a few holes and then retire to the clubrooms for nibbles and drinks, followed by a barbecue.

Anyone wanting to share in the festivities can contact Wendy Foster on 027 440 5086 or email wfryer.nz@gmail.com. Tickets are $20.