Mr Naismith was always there to bail me out. There is no question, that if it weren’t for his help, I would have become a juvenile delinquent. I had no friends my own age and, hence, none of the companionship that is so important to young teenagers.”
* * *
David played left-handed in those early days at Riversdale, unbeknown to George Naismith. But twelve months or so into his traineeship this was all about to change. He explained his switch thus. “Mr Naismith didn’t know I was playing left-handed because as trainees we weren’t even allowed out on the golf course until late at night. After I had been working there for about a year he stopped his car on the way home beside the driving range. He got out of his car and watched me hit a couple of 2-wood shots. They went all right but he asked me what was my strongest hand. I told him it was my right hand. It was explained to me that the strongest hand needs to be on the bottom of the club not on the top as it was with my left-handed grip. It was that night on the practice tee that Mr Naismith told me that I must change to playing right-handed. “Go build yourself some right-handed clubs in the shop,” he told me, “practise with them and I will check you again in six months.” “He then scratched an arc in the patchy grass on the practice tee. It was to indicate the plane of the take-away, and the follow-through after impact, of my ‘new’ right-handed swing. I didn’t argue, after all he was the boss! I just said OK. As I slowly learned to play right-handed I practised even harder. I didn’t play a competitive round for nearly a year and it was at least eighteen months before I won anything competing against the other assistants and playing right-handed.”
Although he switched from left to right-handed, David Graham still preferred to putt left-handed. One evening when it got too dark to hit balls on the practice fairway, he went to the practice putting green in front of the clubhouse. He had been there only a few minutes when George came over to him from the adjacent pro-shop. David thought Naismith had already left to drive home. Actually George had forgotten something and had returned to get it. Naismith was not impressed with David’s left-handed putting and told him in no uncertain terms that David was to do everything on the golf course right-handed.
This message, it would seem, needed to be repeated before it sank in. John Montague lived near David Graham and had been a junior member with David at Wattle Park. John also went to Riversdale, as a junior member, a year or so after David started his apprenticeship there. The two boys would often practise their putting together late in the afternoon on the practice green in front of the clubhouse. John recalls one such session being suddenly interrupted by the loud cry of ‘here David catch this’. David barely had time to reach out with his hand and grab the golf club that George had tossed in his direction. He did catch the club and with his right hand. Pointing to it, George reminded his young apprentice, “That’s why I told you to do everything on the golf course right-handed, and that includes putting!”
* * *
Three well known Melbourne identities also have distinct memories of a young David Graham ‘serving his time’ at Riversdale Golf Club.
Bill Barrot, the brilliant centreman for Richmond (Australian Rules) Football Club was, as a youth, a caddy at Riversdale. He was also keen to leave school to get a job and had his eyes on an apprenticeship under George Naismith. Somewhat annoyed at missing out on the job and, soon after, at David Graham’s insistence that Barrot couldn’t use the practice fairway until after four o’clock in the afternoon, young Bill ‘dropped’ Graham with a straight left through an open side window of the pro-shop. The great irony of Graham getting the apprenticeship over Barrot is that Naismith was a fanatical one-eyed supporter of the Richmond Tigers. Little did George know then that David Graham would go on to win two majors while ‘bustling Billy Barrot’ would help his beloved Tigers win two premierships and represent Victoria eleven times during an illustrious football career.
Lindsay Gitsham, a trainee in the same year as David Graham, (and later the professional at Kingston Heath) remembers picking up David and another trainee in his car for a couple of rounds one Monday at Woodlands Golf Club. The idea was to play 18 holes in the morning, have a sandwich for lunch, and play another 18 holes in the afternoon. On the first hole in the morning David had a double bogey 6 and promptly retired to the practice fairway. The other two completed their 18 holes, had some lunch, and were joined at the last minute by David to play a second 18 holes. “Again David had a six on the first hole and again he stomped off to the practice fairway. After finishing our second 18 we signalled to David that we were leaving to drive home.” David was still on the practice range. To their surprise he yelled back for them to go without him as he “needed to continue with his practice.” Lindsay found out later that David had stayed on the practice fairway until darkness set in. Then, and only then, he lugged his golf bag over his shoulder and hitchhiked home all the way to Glen Waverley.
Ranald Macdonald, the great-grandson of the legendary Australian newspaperman, David Syme, and himself the Managing Director of The Age at only 26 years of age, played regularly at Riversdale in the early 1960s with David Graham.
In an interview for Golf Victoria magazine (April 2010), Macdonald acknowledged that back then he didn’t detect in Graham the player who would become a two time major champion. “Rather immodestly”, he remembered, “I felt I was a better chipper and putter than he was. We’d play for a few dollars. He was a young man of few words but always a delight to play with.” Indeed Macdonald shared “a common ground” with Graham, having also switched from playing golf left-handed to right-handed as a youngster.
The author’s first encounter with David Graham was a few months after David had started his apprenticeship with George Naismith. It was at the Victorian Boys Championship, played that year at Riversdale. In the locker room of the Riversdale club house there was a full size billiard table which proved to be very popular with some of the boys on completion of their rounds. On the first day of competition I watched as a young David Graham ‘took on’ a couple of the amateurs in a game of snooker. His challenge to them lasted only three or four minutes. The stern voice of George Naismith rang out from the doorway leaving no doubt that David’s game was over. “Put the cue back in the rack laddie,” instructed George, “you still have work to do in the pro shop.” Without a word Graham beat a hasty retreat to the workbench.
George Naismith certainly worked the boy non-stop during the early years of his apprenticeship, giving him every job he could. Sometimes David would return home so tired he couldn’t eat his dinner. He would fall on his bed and go to sleep fully clothed. He had one day off a week and on that day he would still get up at 6am and play golf all day. With long hours day after day and no weekends off, it seemed such a hard life for someone so young. His mother noted that “The more tired he was, the more determined to stick it out he became. Over time I began to see the wisdom behind this training”, she said. “If his determination and ambition was to be broken it was better to do it then and let him pursue some other occupation before it was too late.”
In the latter years of his apprenticeship, and early on as an assistant professional, he suffered for his outspoken ambition. He would tell everyone what he was going to do, only to be answered with laughter or ridicule. He withdrew more and more into a world of his own. He was labelled ‘a loner’. He would see other assistants have late nights, skip practice, have a few drinks, but that path was not for him. He became even more determined. Frequently he would say to his mother “I’ll show all of them one day, just wait and see.”
When David went off to play in the assistants’ competitions, usually on a Monday, with “a clean shirt and a bag almost as big as himself,” Patricia Graham would send him out the front door with a “good luck Joe.” According to her, it was something that stuck throughout the years. “Much later in America, his little son Andrew would say the same thing on the first morning of a tournament.”
Following David Graham’s first win playing as a right-hander, there was a period of renewed confidence
