Competition entry 

Optional social play during competition times was introduced during the recent bad weather. It was only in place when the playing condition of the course was exceptionally bad and it was borderline whether the course should be open or not. It is only an option when detailed by the Club.

Members entering their name on a competition timesheet are expected to play in that competition of the day.

If a Member chooses to end their round prematurely due to the weather, for example, there is no refund. In the event of the course being declared unplayable, a Club decision will be made around the entry fee.

Please do not put the Pro shop in unnecessarily awkward positions of having to refuse refund requests or refusing individual requests for social play during competition times. 

Magic was in the air last Friday. For a start, the sun was shining and it didn't rain. The course was dry enough to allow carts, the greens were perfect (as always) and all the bunkers were back in play (hooray!).

There was magic of a different kind at work as well.

It seems that our ladies, having tired of watching Hollywood hero action movies through the long rainy season, decided to let loose with some spellbinding stuff of their own. And supernatural heroines are not to be trifled with!

Sally Hill was Friday Club's most consistent golfer last year. Like Hermione Granger, the outstanding student in charms, potions and defence against the dark arts at Hogwarts, Sally has continued to excel this year.

However, in our last outing she lost by the width of her magic wand in division two to veteran warrior and avowed Wonder Woman devotee Prue Bardsley.

Prue has delighted her own supporters with secret powers that she used to recover from injury and build a small fortress at Mosman at the same time. Playing with all the athleticism of Wonder Woman's mum, Prue returned a rather neat 34 points to beat Sally on countback.

In division three, the always dapper Louise Millward went one better than last week to return a very impressive 37 points. Channeling Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Louise basked in the bright sunshine, made some classy quips and took a wooden stake to the rest of the field. Helen Ayers, playing with the poise and wisdom of an earth goddess, was second with 34 points.

In division one (where folklore flourishes), there were too many Daves (a bad omen), so one of them had to be vanquished. Dave Quinn emerged triumphant with a mighty 41 points, a silver bullet to the heart of poor Dave Ronald who returned a more-than-decent 39 to fall just short.

Dave Ronald is suffering from a bad back and is looking for a magic spell to cure it. "Hermione, has that potion come to the boil yet?"

New Kids on the Block

The pages of history were often conveyed through song. Yes, some history was written on paper or chiseled in stone but the pages were hard to turn in bed and there were problems with accuracy.

For example, Julius Caesar wrote about his own campaigns. Rather surprisingly, he was always heroic, always won and always rode a big white horse.

Homer wrote the epic tomes The Iliad and The Odyssey but he was blind (I know ... no wonder it was so hard to read!).

Literature became an endangered species after the fall of the Roman Empire and for the next 500 years when the skill of writing was lost (bad spelling, no grammar and no punctuation). Even fewer people could read (it was like Facebook before the internet!).

Enter the minstrel. These troubadour singers and musicians would go on a road trip, hear some news, blend it with gossip, add some saucy bits and make a song out of it. They were the first tabloid journalists.

But often the minstrels would rely on old wooden or bone flutes for their musical accompaniment. It made audiences wince (like listening to your Scottish neighbour tune his bagpipes) and patrons began looking for something more tuneful.

Professional musicians took the stage. Music continued to evolve until it produced boy bands like New Kids on the Block who took the world by storm in the mid 80s (that's the 1980s for our Gen Y readers).

We had our own version of new kids on the block when a trio of fresh-faced lads took centre stage at our previous Friday gathering.

Boy bands usually comprise sweet looking lads wearing body-hugging tee-shirts, with big teeth, bright smiles, tight jeans and angelic faces. Friday Club's new boys had some of these qualities (angelic faces) and made quite an impression.

David Slaytor, playing just his second Friday club game this year, had too much timbre for in-form John Hanson in division one (where they sing acapella) and won with 37 to John's 35.

Norman Taylor, having dodged grandparent duties, played his first ever Friday game, scored 35 and scraped home on a countback in division two, with ever tuneful Wayne Grundy runner-up.

Meanwhile Adrian Pryke, having finished second two weeks ago, went one better to win the Grammy in division three. Adrian sang solo and hit all the high notes to record 36 points, with Louise Millward (backup vocals and tambourine) returning a nice 32 to be runner-up.

Louise is also a relative newcomer but doesn't really fit the Boy Band theme of this article ... although Emma Wiggle managed to break into a long-established boy band, so maybe we should make an exception ... Louise and the FC Boys?

Now - what of the man!  We have traced and discussed many times the young golfing guns of that first decade - the 20's, but what about the "Grandfathers?" Those first committees were made up of men with experiences in general business and life, many already retired and some new to the game. The President Henry Mann, a paper merchant, was familiar with the running of a club as he was already Vice-President at Bonnie Doon but in William Whytock the club was to have a qualified Scotland born golf administrator as its Captain.

We cannot underestimate how lucky we were that he joined Long Reef when he did. Life Member Wally Smith one of those young guns described Whytock in the 80s, not long before he himself died,  "as a craggy, fierce looking Scot, who hit the ball with a big back swing known as 'The St. Andrews swing'* I think we can surmise that Whytock was a very experienced golfer and a no nonsense extremely knowledgeable administrator. He was tall and impressive and in the last decade of his life gave his skill and knowledge gained over decades to our developing club. 

His  home club was the East Lothian Golf Club in Gullane on the  southern side of the Firth of Forth. He started walking around with his father as a child before he joined and he maintained a connection with East Lothian all his life having become an Honorary member.

To quote from Golf in Australia he was ,"born into a golfing atmosphere, he took to the game as soon as he could walk..... he became so efficient as a young golfer in Scotland he attained the scratch standard and, a little later, the plus mark. He was Captain and Secretary of various Scottish and English Clubs. The list of his golfing associates is a virtual who's who of the early 20^th  century." 

William Whytock was born in 1859. The exact date of his arrival in Australia requires further research but we know that he settled in the Manly District about the end of First World War. It seems likely that he would know Dan Soutar. He joined Long Reef in April 1923. At the Club's AGM in July that year a few months after he had joined he was elected to one of the six general committee member positions. His first proposal at that meeting was the idea of creating a "Suggestion Book" because I think he had many suggestions of his own to make!

In 1923 he proposed that the club should provide a monthly medal for the Associates and he continued to develop the women's programme with equal measure to that of the men. By August 1923 he was elected to the Greens Committee, by September nominated for a sub-committee to revise the club rules and in March 1924 elected to Match and Handicap followed in April when he was proposed to join the newly created House committee. His influence and suggestions had more than commenced! It would not have been a surprise when at the club's third AGM in July 1924 he was elected Club Captain, a position he retained for the next four years. He followed this with one year as Vice-Captain from 1928-29.

 Over his time as Captain the Minute book tell us of Whytock's and his sub committee's ideas for club rules changes and course development. In September 1925 Golf in Australia reported that "the Greens Committee at Long Reef have formulated a scheme for altering the course, which involves the abandonment of one hole, the formation of a new hole, and the lengthening of two of the present holes. Considerable attention is now being played it the fairways.." In the Club Minutes there is also mention of the above as well as several bunker changes, removing some and adding others. 

He was a driving force behind the course extension project to make it an 18 hole course and the necessary draining of the swamp that would be needed to make it happen. He led the subcommittee that was deputised to visit the Council in person and promote the plan in 1926 and worked alongside Dan Soutar and Frank Eyre who had been asked to design it. The project had first been voiced at  his first AGM in 1923. He was there in the 20s  to establish a course rating for stroke matches  and to select teams for the men's first grade and inter-club matches. There was a C-Grade win in 1927, and he stands proudly with the 1929 B-Grade winning team in the photo below. He was involved when the club applied to play in A- Grade in 1929 which was accepted. In the 20s by then in his late 60s he was still playing a fair game himself in B Grade weekly and Grade Competitions. 

His influence went beyond Long Reef's boundaries. He also played a major part in the course design of the Cromer club, then known as the Dee Why links. He was President of the new Balgowlah Golf Club in the late 20s as well as a regular correspondent in magazines like Golf in Australia under the nom-de-plume of "Sandy Tee." (Thanks to Ross Lanes research in the 80's the Archives have some copies of Sandy Tee's work.) 

Upon his death in 1936 Golf in Australia published a lengthy tribute describing his loss as "a severe one for Australian Golf." "The influence in the Manly District has been considerable, in view of the fact that it is less than twenty years since he settled in Australia"

The Whytock trophy has been competed for annually since 1929, with the exception of 5 years of WW2, 1982, 1983 and 2004. It is hoped that weather permitting the 2022 winner's name can soon be added to the list and the club's great Captain remembered.     

Sandra Mellowes | Archives Committee