Golf: Middlemore's proud roll of golfing honour

Middlemore is the fourth home for the Auckland Golf Club, since it formation in 1885.

The club began life at the Auckland Domain after the club was formed by a group of Auckland businessmen who reacted to an editorial in the Herald that lamented the lack of courses in the region.

The club moved to farm land at Greenlane and then to the spectacular surrounds of One Tree Hill which was the venue for the New Zealand amateur championships in 1901 and 1905. It was also where the club's first New Zealand Open in 1909 was staged, when J. A. Clements, the country's first home-born professional, claimed the second of his three titles.

The One Tree Hill location had a variety of hazards, including stone walls, sheep pens and outcrops of volcanic rock.

The club moved to Middlemore soon after, opening with a nine-hole course on April 2, 1910.

The New Zealand Open returned to Middlemore in 1914 and was won by E. S. Douglas, who won four Open titles in all.

Ernie Moss, the resident professional at Middlemore, claimed the first of four Open championships on his home track in 1924, but it was 31 years before the Open would return to Middlemore. It heralded the arrival of the legendary Australian Peter Thomson (above).

He was to have a profound effect at Middlemore. He took out his four of nine New Zealand championships on the course, with his 1955 win including setting a course-record 65 which still stands.

His prizemoney? £150.

Thomson won his penultimate Open title when the championship returned to the course 10 years later. The club's profit that year was a princely £15.



There have been other great players to grace the fairways, most notably Jack Nicklaus who played an exhibition against Bob Charles in 1962, a year before Charles' British Open triumph.

Charles was also involved in an exhibition five years later against that other great American of the time, Arnold Palmer, who said Middlemore was the best course he had played on during that visit.

Thomson's association with the course developed when he was contracted as the course adviser in 1994, redesigning all the greens.

This included the controversial 17th, the par five, which Thomson remodelled into a two-tier green like its equivalent to the Old Course.

And for Nobilo, the course holds special memories.

It was there, as a 13-year-old, that he broke par for the first time in his life.