One particular open day four of us were in the penultimate group of the day’s competition, and the then resident club pro Chris Tickner, was playing with some members in the final group. Tickner, who played his way through qualifying into the field for the 1978 Open Championship at St Andrews, was an absolute flusher and we spent more time admiring his shots than we did watching the results of our own swings.
Tickner, who was awarded life membership of the PGA of Australia in 2011, was raised just a stone’s throw from the course and he learned the game on the Camden layout. That afternoon watching him play stayed with me for a long time as I had never seen any player, at that stage of my golfing education, hit the ball as if it was on a string. He made the game look so damn easy … he made the course look easy. But I can assure you after many…