home and school. Passing by an open field he noticed a solitary figure hitting golf balls from one side of the field to the other. Getting off his bike he stood and watched, with growing interest, the man’s intense concentration over each ball before unleashing a powerful, fluent swing. David was particularly taken by the flight of the balls as they left the face of the golf club and arced in the overcast sky to land softly on the green turf some distance away. These images remained with him as he eventually continued his journey home.
Putting his bicycle in the garage he quickly set about to find some implements with which he could attempt to imitate what he had just seen. All he could find was a hockey stick and an old tennis ball. Undeterred he started playing golf, of sorts, in the backyard of the Burwood house.
For several days his after school pursuit of that ‘little white tennis ball’ with the somewhat battered hockey stick continued unabated. When his mother realised it was golf, not hockey, that was his new found interest she recalled that some years previously she too had dabbled, albeit briefly, with the royal and ancient game. More importantly, she had bought a few second-hand clubs that were now “somewhere amongst the accumulated mess of the garage.” It didn’t take long for David Graham to find them. They were gathering dust behind a stack of empty boxes and, as a bonus, were all sitting in a narrow little canvas golf bag.
Perhaps fate had willed that the little canvas bag and its handful of golf clubs were just waiting for the right young boy to find them. That young boy was definitely David Graham. In real need of some diversion from his unhappy life they appeared at exactly the right time and place.
But there was one problem. David was a natural right-hander in everything he did yet his mother’s clubs were left-handed. This proved to be only a temporary setback. David Graham would become a left-handed golfer and, with the couple of discoloured balls that were found in the side pocket of the bag, immediately began “knocking the ball around south-paw fashion on an oval near the house.”
From the day he discovered those clubs in the garage, David did little else in his spare time except hit golf balls. His mother remembered one early evening in particular. “He rushed in just as I was preparing tea and implored me to ‘come and have a look’. ‘I can now hit it from one lot of goal posts through the ones up at the other end of the oval. Come on, come and see for yourself!’ So urgent was his plea that I, as it turned out, left the chops to burn and the potatoes to boil dry, and followed him out to the oval. Sure enough, he would line up a golf ball and with an almighty swipe send the ball, split cover and all, on its way. I must admit it was exciting.”
The after school and weekend golf continued but with an emerging earnestness that before long was to materialise into an obsession. As he was to say later “my love of golf was now only exceeded by my hatred of school.” By the time he turned thirteen, David had ‘outgrown’ the local oval and was hitting golf balls at a local nine-hole golf course, Wattle Park. He was now skipping school on a regular basis. On these days he would get dressed in the morning and pretend to go off to school but never actually get there. Instead he would ride his bicycle to Wattle Park and “hang around the golf shop and go hit balls on the driving range.” “It certainly beat school,” he said in 1990, “where I was far from being a good student. I had few friends and got into a lot of fights, none of which I won due to my small size.”
* * *
Soon after his thirteenth birthday, David Graham joined the Wattle Park Golf Club as a junior member. Bob Patey, a long time Wattle Park member, has this memory of David Graham. “He was a desperately keen thirteen-year old left-hander, striving to make the C grade pennant team. Unfortunately he couldn’t make the team, he was so slightly built and had a very big slice, but it certainly wasn’t for want of trying.”
David’s efforts were however not without their reward. He played in, and won, the club’s junior championship. He was presented with a tiny little cup. It was his very first trophy and, regardless of what was to come his way in later years, remained a most prized possession throughout his golfing career.
Local teenager, Neil Hudson, was his opponent in the final and recalls, “After I missed a two foot (60cm) putt at the eighteenth to lose the match, David ran around the perimeter of the green like a circus pony, whooping with delight and punching the air in triumph.”
A few weeks after his first championship victory, Patricia Graham noticed that her son had become much quieter than usual. He was, she acknowledged, “a bit more headstrong than most boys of his age and never able to stay still or relax.” She thought his subdued mood meant that something had gone wrong at school. “But no!” she would write later, “suddenly he burst forth. It was as if he had been bottling something up inside for some time and now he wanted it out.”
And out it all came! “You are not going to like this, I know, but I have decided what I want to be. I am going to be the best golfer in the world. Don’t try and change my mind. I’m sorry but just you wait and see, I’ll show you.” That exclamation was typical of a young David Graham. Right from the outset his attitude was not, ‘I want to be’, or, ‘I would like to be’, but straight onto the front foot with, “I am going to be.” It was an attitude that would fuel his drive to succeed at golf, yet also one that would frequently put him ‘offside’ with other golfers and golf officials.
Patricia’s reaction to her son’s outburst was, in turn, typical of most mothers when faced with such a heartfelt pronouncement. “Initially”, she reflected, “I was full of anxiety for it is common knowledge that many dream of stardom only to fall by the wayside, reduced to floundering forever in and out of jobs. I decided to show as little reaction to his announcement as possible and see what the passing of some time would bring to his grandiose plans. But as the months went by I sensed that his determination to be a golfer only got stronger.”
These months came at a crucial stage in David Graham’s life. With his desire to make golf his chosen career, and a father who continued to make things difficult for everyone in the Graham home, he was very fortunate to have two professional golfers, both very experienced and highly respected, put him on a pathway which would turn his dream into reality. The first was John Crean, the professional at Wattle Park. The other was the long serving professional at Riversdale Golf Club, George Naismith.
John Crean was intrigued by David’s total dedication to practice. He devoted numerous hours advising and coaching the young lad, many of which, in truth, David should have been spending at school. He also had the wisdom to perceive that schoolwork was most definitely not David’s forte, a career as a golf professional just possibly might be.
* * *
As David approached his fourteenth birthday his determination to leave school grew stronger. Well aware of David’s passion for golf, at the exclusion of virtually everything else, it was Crean who, according to Patricia Graham, “came up with the suggestion that was to change his life forever. He told David that if he wanted to be a professional golfer the road ahead would be a hard one but the best man for him to serve his traineeship under was George Naismith.” Patricia Graham added, “within an hour David was at the Riversdale pro-shop pleading his case.”
George Naismith, like John Crean, saw something very different in the skinny, rather dishevelled young teenager that stood before him. He had not considered taking on another apprentice. However, at the boy’s urgings, George agreed to give him a trial period in the pro-shop, working during the upcoming May school holidays.
David Graham worked long and hard during those holidays in a variety of somewhat menial tasks, none of which involved him actually hitting a golf ball. David’s enthusiasm for golf at the expense of continuing his schooling was being deliberately tested by Naismith. Nearly four decades earlier, George had also made a decision to leave school on his fourteenth birthday and
