GOLF in Taree hits the 100 year milestone with a week of special events starting on Monday that will include a Centenary Dinner to be held at Club Taree on the Friday night.
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An open day for veterans will start the week on Monday with open events on Tuesday and Thursday. The third and final round of the women's club championship will be decided on Wednesday.
Sporting greats Doug Walters (cricket), Max Krilich (rugby league) and Nikki Hudson (hockey) will play in Friday's ambrose and all will be at the dinner that night. A special feature of the week will be a chance to win an A Class Mercedes Benz as a hole-in-one prize on the Friday and Saturday. This is supplied by Taree Motorama.
A committee consisting of Rose Brinkman (chairman), Terry Britten, Peter Fitzpatrick, Graham Gibson, David Gosling, Jill Gosling, Michael Hotchkiss, Hugh McCrindle OAM, Rowena Meldrum and Kay Woolcock has spent the last six months organising the celebrations.
A special centenary magazine edited by Graham Gibson and printed by Fairfax Media has also been produced.
Golf in Taree dates back to a meeting held on May 25 1915. A club had been formed at Wingham the previous year.
Present at the meets were Messrs Layton (chairman), Lusby, Richardson, Davies, Bailey, Arnheim, Maloney and Connelly. Things moved quickly from there, with play starting on Saturday June 12 while the club was officially opened on June 19.
The centenary magazine notes that the Taree and Wingham clubs were among the earliest formed outside of metropolitan areas in Australia. AE Smith was the first president with the first course fashioned out of a back portion of land at Taree Showground.
"Cattle pens, pigsties, buildings and logs created some testing hazards,'' the magazine notes.
After a decade the club purchased land on Wingham Road to build a new course. A year later the associations (women members) formed their own committee.
Plans to extend the course to 18 holes started in the late 1930s, but the intervention of World War II, when the club struggled to stay in existance because of a lack of members and other problems meant this wasn't realised until 1954 under the presidency of Mick Yarad.
In 2000 negotiations began to amalgamate Taree Golf Club and Taree RSL Club. On Monday August 28 2000 the board of both clubs met and it was unanimously decided to merge the two. Extra ordinary general meetings of both clubs were held on Sunday October 15 2000 where the amalgamation was confirmed.
Friday night's dinner is expected to attract the maximum crowd of 300, with past members travelling from throughout the State and interstate to attend. This will include a number of past champions.
The club's current golfing membership is 390.
