An Auckland cop has managed to complete his goal of playing every 18-hole golf course in the country, just weeks before he is expected to die.
Greg Holmes, the national clan lab (clandestine drug laboratory) manager of the New Zealand Police, began his major golfing milestone more than 15 years ago – shortly before a shock cancer diagnosis that changed his life forever.
With his condition rapidly deteriorating, Holmes was told last week that he wouldn’t live to Christmas after it was found the cancer had grown into a bile duct and was “blocking everything”.
Speaking to the Herald while completing his final course on Wednesday – Marlborough Golf Club in Blenheim – Holmes said it had “taken everything I own” just to get out of bed that morning.
The 58-year-old was first diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2010, after a visit to the doctor. In 2021, he was advised his disease was terminal and that the only treatments available were palliative care – and was told he had two years to live.
“I never imagined I’d be feeling this bad a couple of months ago. It’s taken everything I own to get out of bed this morning. They put me on steroids for the day just to get me through the round,” he said.
“This is my last game of golf and there’s probably going to be some tears.”
What started as lads’ trips to watch horse racing in pubs across the country slowly transitioned into rounds of golf about 17 years ago.
Holmes – known more commonly among friends and colleagues as Holmer – said it never dawned on him at that stage to play every course in New Zealand, because he and his mates would often play at the same locations.
“All of a sudden, I just thought f*** it, why don’t we have a crack, and they all bought into it.”
The bucket list has taken the group to some of the most prestigious courses in New Zealand – from Kauri Cliffs near the Bay of Islands to Jack’s Point in Queenstown.
It’s understood there are 288 18-hole courses across the country – many of which Holmes called “hidden gems”.
“One of the cool things is we would’ve never gone to the places it’s taken us to, and it’s been essentially the same core of guys since the start.
“Golf has been huge in my cancer journey. Booking these trips, assembling the guys, it just gave me goals every few months. It gives you something to look forward to.”
He said his most recent diagnosis came after a golf trip to Wellington, where he knocked off six courses to bring his total left to complete to three.
“I walked in the door and Carmen [his wife] said, ‘Man you are yellow’, so she rung my oncologist and he told me to come straight in.”
Holmes was told last week that his battle – which would reach its 15-year anniversary on December 16 – would come to an end before Christmas this year.
“That wasn’t the news I wanted,” he said. “You always know it’s coming, but I was feeling good. I didn’t expect to go downhill this quick at the end.”
But despite the limited timeline, he was able to still fully appreciate the mountain ranges surrounding the course.
“Look at this. How could you not love this? This is a beautiful part of the world ... It almost looks like one of those paintings looking out at those hills,” he said while driving down the 16th fairway – the third-to-last hole of golf he’d ever play in his life.
As he played the 18th hole with his wife and two sons, Ben, 25, and Tom, 21, Holmes was followed by an army of his closest friends – as more waited behind the green with a bottle of champagne.
And when he sank the final putt of his life at 4.47pm , there was not a dry eye at Marlborough Golf Club.
Holmes said that throughout his nearly 15-year cancer journey, he’s endured 15 operations, 40 CT scans, 30 MRI scans and just shy of 300 rounds of chemotherapy.
“My oncologist told me a couple of weeks ago that only 0.9% of the population could handle more than 50 rounds of chemo.
“They call me a bit of an enigma.
“It’s a life of one week feeling like s*** and then you build back up, try and do as much as you possibly can that second week, and then you know what’s coming.
“I developed this thing that I started to dry retch driving over Khyber Pass [in Auckland] because my brain was telling me this is not a place you want to go. Turning right was going to the oncologist and turning left was going to have surgery done.
“My oncologist, Sanjeev Deva, and surgeon, Adam Bartlett, they’ve just done an incredible job. They’ve really gone above and beyond, just amazing people.”
Holmes said that during a recent bout of chemotherapy he was asked by another patient if it was also his first time. “Not quite,” he chuckled.
“The worst thing over the years is sitting in that oncology department when you’ve had scans done. You’re just sitting there and praying.”
He said he was effectively cleared of cancer in 2019, which gave him a “massive lease of life”, but it turned out they had misread the scans, and during his next appointment, “it just all turned bad from there”.
“I’ve had some wonderful life experiences ... Just doing stuff with your kids, that’s always a highlight.
“Even though I’m dying, I consider myself so lucky. My family, my friends. Not many guys have people like this around them the whole time ... [I’ve] lived it to the fullest.”
Holmes has been able to raise tens of thousands of dollars for the Cancer Society and Bowel Cancer NZ through taking part in golfing events such as the “longest day” challenge – where you’re challenged to play 72 holes of golf in one day.
If completing 5000-plus holes of golf around the country wasn’t enough, Holmes had his first hole-in-one just two months ago at his home course, Whitford Park.
Holmes has worked for the New Zealand Police for almost 32 years, a job which he said he has “loved”.
“I went into drugs and organised crime really early. I classify those people as the real criminals. They make it a living to destroy people’s lives and benefit from it,” he said.
“Organised crime in New Zealand is just getting out of hand.”
He said there had been some “real highs and lows” during his three decades of service. He shared one time when he was carrying out a clan lab warrant in West Auckland, and the police got the address wrong.
“I went crunching through the door but still found a lab,” he laughed.
One of the most notable moments in his career, however, was the death of one of his colleagues, Sergeant Don Wilkinson, in 2008.
Wilkinson, who was undercover at the time, was fatally shot while trying to install a tracking device on a suspected methamphetamine manufacturer’s car outside his South Auckland home.
Holmes was the first on the scene in Māngere and called for back-up while another officer began CPR.
“I was in charge that night, and it’s haunted me forever. It took a while [to move on].”
He took over as the national clan lab manager in 2018.
“Work has been incredible to me, more so in the later years when I’ve become slower and slower, they’ve gone out of their way for us,” he said.
Detective Sergeant Bruce Howard told the Herald he started working with Holmes about 2002 at Auckland Metropolitan Crime and Operations Support (Amcos).
Howard said he arrived from being the officer in charge of the child abuse team and couldn’t work out why everyone from Amcos regarded him with disdain.
“It turned out that Holmer thought it would be funny to tell everyone that I was a stickler for a collar and tie dress standard and that I would enforce that and have an expectation that everyone came 15 minutes early for a daily briefing, both of which were entirely untrue. No one in drug investigations dressed like that.
“This was to set the tone for the time we worked together. We worked some long and hard hours, and his mischievous sense of humour was never far from the surface. It didn’t stop him doing the hard yards, but did provide some humorous highlights and lighten the sense of pressure that was always present in serious drug manufacturing and distribution investigations.”
Another colleague, Detective Sergeant John Sowter, likened Holmes to a “cockroach” in the way that he’d refused to quit throughout his 15-year cancer battle.
“Despite everything, he’s kept turning up to work and doing a great job, which is more than I can say for some of us on a Monday morning.
“He’s a top bloke with a wicked sense of humour and an obsession with golf that’s borderline unhealthy. The guy’s been beating me on the course for years, but now that his health’s slowing him down, I’m thinking this might finally be my shot at victory.”
Benjamin Plummer is an Auckland-based reporter for the New Zealand Herald who covers sport and breaking news. He has worked for the Herald since 2022.