There will be a number of golfers pining in their bubbles over missing out on the annual Easter Bunny.
It’s one of many annual tournaments, traditionally played on the day before Easter Friday, by a group aptly named Press Golfing Academy (PGA), formed a long time ago by a handful of us who worked at
The Press at the time.
The group has seen many changes, retirements, career curtailing injuries, untimely and tragic deaths, and others like myself who rarely get out now on the regular weekday tournaments because of work.
The Easter Bunny is one of our four majors on the PGA calendar and for all but three or four of the tournaments it has been at Waimakariri Gorge.
We’ve played in all conditions from howling nor’westers to snow – where free drops were given and it was wise to use a coloured ball.
There’s a hole-in-one trophy named after one of our late members who holed in on the 17th one year. No one has yet matched the feat. But the late member is always remembered at that spot.
Then there’s the after-match and prize-giving, an Easter Bunny going to the winner.
The PGA comprises golfers who cover the wide spectrum of handicaps. The group’s founder, who will go unnamed would be one of the most prolific golfers in Canterbury.
He is also an amazing stats man who has kept all of the scores, high points, low points, birdies, albatrosses, hole-in-ones and every other detail over the decades from the hundreds of tournaments, match-plays and other one-off fixtures that have been played.
His own playing stats are impressive – 169 18-hole rounds in 2019 (plus three part rounds) on 38 different New Zealand courses, mostly in Canterbury, (plus four in Australia).
This year, he played a phenomenal 51 rounds up until the day before lockdown. In the last 12 months he’s played 170 full rounds, “none of them memorable for their quality,” he chipped in.
And of missing the Easter Bunny?
He’s missing it, but he has set up a chipping area on his back lawn. The golf just might get better.
