MONDAY PROFILE: Small man, big heart

ANENDRA SINGH
Mike Alexander, with a prize winners' list in one hand and a microphone in the other, peers over the spectacles precariously perched on the bridge of his nose, as a schoolteacher would to pupils.
At first glance it seems acutely rude that more than 100 beer-swilling players milling around in the clubroom during the Hawke's Bay Golf Club's annual champagne breakfast tournament are paying scant regard to Alexander calling out names in front of a mountain of prizes.
"Stand up when you're talking," someone yells from across the floor at the squatty, 167cm golf stalwart, as the clubroom erupts into laughter.
Alexander, with wife Elaine tying up loose ends not too far away, doesn't flinch. Neither does he initially show any emotion but simply purses his lips then snaps back: "Right, turn the tap off at the bar, please. There'll be no more beers served until we're done here!"
There's more laughter in the room and the poker-faced 63-year-old cracks up himself and surrenders.
Later at his Hastings home, Alexander explains to SportToday: "I've had short jokes all my life but I give as much as I receive. They did stop the bar for two minutes but it's a social event and it's vital for people to have fun. They needed to turn up the sound system a bit more."
Five years ago Alexander played in a champagne breakfast tournament in Wellington at his former Wainuiomata Golf Club.
The stableford tournament impressed Alexander so much that the ex-Bay club committee member brought the concept home. Over the years the event has raised much-needed revenue for the Bay club to improve facilities and expand services to their members.
In the inaugural year in 2003, the champagne event lured 86 golfers and raised funds that were used to buy furniture in the clubhouse. The following years saw the upgrading of the kitchen facilities and the purchase of an auto score. Money raised last month will be used to buy accessories for the auto score.
"Elaine does 99 percent of the work and I do just one percent," says the Golf Hawke's Bay council representative to New Zealand Golf.
Born in Birmingham, England, Alexander emigrated to Wellington as a 16-year-old with his late mother, Ethel. He and Elaine married when he was a 33-year-old petrol station proprietor in the capital.
"Once every year we came to holiday in Hawke's Bay with our three children at the Windsor Park Motor Camp," he says. "We fell in love with the weather, so we moved here permanently."
With children Vickie, Michael and Dawn, the Alexanders settled in Havelock North. Mike taught technology at Flaxmere Intermediate and Elaine started a gift shop in the village. She sold the shop a few years later and worked for a florist before buying the La Fleur courier business, which still operates today under a different ownership.
After 15 years of teaching, Alexander retired and bought the golf retail business, Sharpies, from incumbent Bay club president Wayne Jeffery. Five years ago he relocated the business to the Hawke's Bay Showgrounds from Heretaunga Street before selling it to Bay senior men's representative, Darryn Turley.
Having played soccer in England, Alexander stumbled on to golf as in his thirties when the body started taking longer to recover from injuries.
An employee at the Wellington petrol station, who was a member of the Wainuiomata club, talked him into going for a round of golf.
"I've been hooked on it ever since," says Alexander as Elaine, who incidentally never played the game, smiles and nods in approval.
"It just wasn't my game," says Elaine, who has caddied for her husband over those years.
Today, Alexander flirts around the three to seven handicap mark. His note to fame was representing the province in the now defunct Bay B team.
"I came close to the Bay Masters (team) but never made it," he says.
Son Michael had cerebral palsy but the Alexanders raised their family with an "open mind".
"We just got on with life. We were in fact quite hard on Michael and raised him like any other normal child," explains Elaine, saying he had to cope with climbing stairs and living in their home in a hilly spot in Havelock North.
She disappears into the bedroom to return with a giant black-and-white framed photograph of Michael, the child, meeting a clown in Wellington. Former award-winning Evening Post photographer, the late Jack Short, took the picture at the Southwood Car Museum in Paraparaumu.
Alexander enjoys his stint as a Hawke's Bay councillor for New Zealand Golf, travelling with women's representative, Joy Carter, every three months to Wellington and also attending the Golf HB management and council meetings.
"We have workshops where we discuss things such as adult membership drives and setting up district websites so clubs can contribute to it," says Alexander, whose champagne breakfast success has caught the attention of other districts.