MOUNT Gambier Golf Club is on a high after winning the South Australian Pro-Am-of-the-Year at the SA Golf Industry Awards Night in Adelaide recently.
The club is still celebrating the unexpected win after hosting the knock-out Mount Gambier PGA Classic event earlier this year.
Tournament director and club professional Craig Davis said he was shocked to take home the trophy.
“It was a pretty good surprise on the night,” he said.
“I guess for us it is really nice to get the recognition for the work we have done.
“We have done so much out here as a club and prepared the best we could for the biggest event we have had in more than a decade.
“To present the golf course the way we did – especially after so many changes and irrigation developments – it was a real credit to the ground staff and volunteers who jumped on board.”
More than 200 people from the South Australian golf industry attended the state dinner in hope to take home the various awards up for grabs.
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However, it was the Mount Gambier Golf fraternity which claimed the biggest club-based award.
“The club has never won something like this before – we have never even been nominated,” Davis said.
“For us it was really exciting.
“I guess to be involved in an event like this in the first place and to be nominated and actually win it is amazing.
“The members have just been over the moon about it.”
Davis said the award was a credit to the members who devoted their time to the club improvements prior to the event, which hosted 32 professionals.
“It was a full club effort,” he said.
“We all got together and rallied.
“There were so many little things we did to present the place as well as we could for the professionals that had otherwise been put off.”
Davis said while the prize money of $11,000 was minor in the scheme of things, he had no troubles in finding the funds to run the event.
“It was a two-second conversation with people, asking them if they wanted to be involved and they had no problem in saying yes and jumping on board,” he said.
“A lot of these people were club members who owned businesses, which made getting the money together a lot easier.”
With the course in top condition and the friendly vibe around the club throughout the tournament, Davis said many professionals had expressed their interest in not only returning next year, but bringing others.
However, he is aware the event at Mount Gambier Golf Course is a fringe tier tournament.
“It is a stepping stone event,” Davis said.
“So for us ideally we don’t want to see the same players back next year because it would be good for them to be going away and furthering their careers.
“But the reality is there will only be one or two who are lucky enough to do so.”
Davis said the event had one professional who has gone on to compete in bigger and better events.
“Jason Norris won the $1.5m Fiji International a couple of months ago and is now set up to play in Asia and Europe for the next 12 months,” he said.
“But this is the attraction of having events like this.
“We had three of our members play with him this year who now have that memory for ever.”
With the hype still around the club, Davis said the aim will put on a “bigger and better” event next year and double the list of professionals.
“We are talking to PGA now about increasing our event number of days, but then in turn we need to look at increasing our prize money,” he said.
“We can’t rest on what we did last year and the fact that we won – we have to try and get bigger and better.
“When we go bigger there is so much scope to get some national broadcast for the city of Mount Gambier and the golf course itself.
“We are pushing to use this as a key leverage point for tourism for the city again – it can be done, if it is done well.”
