For the Love of Golf: A History of the Wanaka Golf Club, will be launched on Saturday at the conclusion of the year-end Jubilee Cup tournament.
It is Mr Carter’s second book in a year. He published Four Threads One Life - an account of his adventures as a surveyor, pilot, rally car driver and adventurer - late last year.
"That’s just four parts of my life that I thought would be interesting...and based on this, [golf club member] John Wilson asked me if I would write a book about the club."
Mr Carter had never played golf before moving from the Waikato to Wanaka about 11 years ago.
His partner Lyn Hill, an avid golfer, encouraged him to take lessons about eight years ago.
"I have caught the bug. I play two or three times a week...I mostly play social golf, with my friends. I do play seriously. I want every stroke to matter but I am not playing competitions. I don’t enjoy the pressure of that," he said.
Mr Carter said there was no way he could have written the book without learning the game.
He also learned about the hijinks in the old days, when local police regularly visited the clubhouse to quieten things down.
"In those days, we are only talking about 30 or 40 years ago, we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t have televisions at the same quality we have now, entertainment was quite different, so the golf club became quite a focus for after-golf evenings and drinking and revelry, which it doesn’t have now."
Initially it had been thought the Wanaka Golf Club might celebrate its centenary this year, marking 100 years since the club reconvened after World War 1.
But very early in his research, Mr Carter and club member Neville Harris found newspaper articles confirming the club formed in 1911, using what is now Pembroke Park, so it had missed the boat.
"It went into recess during the First World War because all the golfers went to war or were filling in to do the jobs that needed to be done when the young men were away in the war.
"So the golf club reformed in 1922 and that is a valid reason to have the centenary dated.
"But the board for its own reasons has decided to postpone it and is deciding whether to have it in 2027, which is 100 years from when the club moved to its present site [in Ballantyne Rd], or in 2029, 100 years after it became an incorporated society."
While the board has not formally resolved when to throw its 100th birthday party, it decided Mr Carter should still go ahead and write the book this year.
"Writing for me was the easy part. The research, the interviews, gathering all the historical data - to me I was more concerned about that, because I needed that to be factually correct. But putting it down in writing was probably the more enjoyable part."
Mr Carter grew up in the Waikato, studied surveying at the University of Otago and returned to the North Island to begin his professional career in the Waikato and later in Auckland.
