Congratulations Les!
Congratulations to Les, a member of Coffs Harbour Golf Club for 60 years! Thank you Brad Greenshields for the wonderful story below:
WHEN Les Rollins first joined as a member of the Coffs Harbour Golf Club, Richie Benaud was captain of the Australian cricket team, this country’s population had just edged past 10 million people, Johnny O’Keefe and Six O’Clock Rock first hit television screens and you only needed three shillings to buy a quart of milk and a loaf of bread.
Times have certainly changed since 1959 but one thing that’s remained constant since then is Les always being a member of the club.
A small ceremony was held recently after a competition round to celebrate the fact that Les has been a member at Coffs Harbour for 60 years and it was a milestone that the 86-year old admits took him by surprise.
“I nearly fell off my chair. There were a lot of people there and I got a real thrill out of that,” Les said.
“I went home and I went to bed that night and I thought a lot about the club as it was when I joined and what it is now. All of the different changes that have gone on through the club is amazing really.”
The reason why the former builder and banana farmer joined the golf club all of those years ago was a simple one.
“I had a few mates out here that were members,” he recalled.
“I only played for four months of the year for the first 10 years or so because I was playing cricket up until I was 37, so the sticks went in the corner when the summer came.”
And it’s been a family affair as well with Les’ wife Lola also being a long-time member of the club.
“She was playing tennis and I was out at the golf club and she thought this is no good,” he said.
“She’s been a member for I imagine over 50 years. She played Wednesday comp for 30 or 40 years.”
Now playing off a handicap of 19, Les got his mark down as low as 7 and claims winning a B-Grade Championship as his highest club honour.
He has just the one hole-in-one to his name but it has a good story to it.
It was at Sawtell in the late-1970s and the ace earned him a Sanyo colour TV. A prize that saw then North Coast President B.L.Miller threaten to take Les’ amateur status off him.
“It was a master builder’s day and they splashed across the bottom of The Advocate that particular morning ‘Master Builder’s Day at Sawtell, colour TV for a hole-in-one’. That was McEwans,” he said.
“And then when I knocked it off, McEwans didn’t want to give it to me. They wanted to give me a sound set, they wanted to give me a camera. They tried to get out of it.
“I actually got my colour TV set six weeks after the event. A few of the builders backed me up because it was a builder’s day and they told McEwans ‘we’re going to withdraw our account if you don’t give Les what was advertised on the front page of The Advocate’ so they didn’t have any option.”
A couple of months ago Les almost added shooting a score lower than his age to his list of achievements but a frustrating finish of a pair of double-bogeys on the last two holes saw him miss out on the milestone by just two strokes.
“I still feel as though I’m going to do it. A couple of mates have a go at me about it, a couple of the old members. You come in and they ask ‘did you shoot your age?’ I say no,” he said.
“Wait until I get a bit older.”
Les added he thinks his long run of being a member of the club will continue for a few more years.
“I just love playing golf. I love the friendship of golf and I love the members here. I still do, I reckon it’s a great club,” he said.
“You get a few special mates in the club and that’s what it is.
“I’m in the two-bob club and I think that’s a great little thing. You say g’day or make some comment on how you played and you say g’day to 50, 60, 80 people every time you go out to play golf. How good is that? That’s why you join.”
Brad Greenshields
Freelance writing, journalism and sports photography
