BERHAMPORE GOLF COURSE (PART TWO)

Berhampore Golf Course is a public course.

The more observant reader would have read about this in the previous post BERHAMPORE GOLF COURSE (PART ONE):

Established in 1916 and based at the Berhampore Golf Course in Wellington, NZ, Mornington Golf Club was founded as a public course to make golf accessible. Originally the Wellington Municipal Golf Club, it rebranded in 1919 and has operated for over 100 years on a challenging, hilly 18-hole layout in the Wellington Town Belt.

I mentioned that the course is very hilly, has lots of gorse in the rough and the fairways slope off to the left or the right up or down steep inclines. At the edges are pine plantations which invariably means a misplaced or even an OK drive rolls off into the pines or gorse bushes. Bummer.

An advantage however is that the difficulty of the course means that it is never crowded or not that I've discovered so far. I don't play on the weekends though. Most public golf courses are teeming with wannabe golfers who have yet to learn the rules or golfing etiquette, which can be frustrating for other golfers. Berhampore in comparison is easy to get on and have a game without booking.

A big downside though is well, the public. The hoi-polloi, the plebs, the rabble, the masses, the great unwashed, the riffraff, the proles - the public in other words.

Not that I mind that much - after all I'm a member of the hoi-polloi classes myself. It's what hoi-polloi brings though to public amenities. Many years ago I wrote a post on this: ET YOU'RE FUCKED - YOU CAN'T PHONE HOME

Too often phone boxes (things of the past), bus shelters, corner shops, public toilets, playgrounds, street furniture, and automated payment machines get graffitied, vandalised and trashed by the people who most likely depend on them the most.

The same goes for public golf courses where many of the users don't give a fuck about others and ignore basic forms of caring and social responsibility - yes etiquette. For golf club members, golf etiquette is in the members' handbooks alongside club rules and the rules of golf. Simply it covers things like:

• maintaining a brisk pace
• yelling "fore" for wild shots
• repairing pitch marks on greens and replacing divots on fairways
• raking bunkers
• staying quiet and still while others swing
• preparing for your shot before it is your turn.
• limit searching for a lost ball to 3 minutes
• calling through faster groups
• not hitting until the group in front is out of range.
• replacing the flag on the green
• keeping carts off greens and tees
• Not standing on or next to the green while marking the card
• etc.

It's common sense and decency really.

I'm not an etiquette crank and a lot of the 'rules' I ignore as I don't play in groups and avoid playing when the course is crowded but one thing that really pisses me off is players not repairing their pitch mark (the dent or hole that a ball makes when landing on the green). It's so easy to do but for some reason many players on municipal or public courses thing that it's not their responsibility. I'm unsure whether this is ignorance or indifference but at some point, if they play regularly they must notice that the greens are peppered with dents and look like the results of gunfire in Beirut (or Wainuiomata shopping centre after a Saturday night).

The greenkeeper(s) at Berhampore golf course do a great job keeping the course in as good condition as their resources allow so must get pissed off that a few of the greens look like colanders.

That's it for today. Look forward to BERHAMPORE GOLF COURSE (PART THREE) coming your way soon.

BERHAMPORE GOLF COURSE (PART ONE)

 I joined Mornington Golf Club this year for several reasons:

1. It was closest to where I live
2. It was familiar to me
3. It was affordable

The alternatives were either too far away, not interesting enough or too expensive. I was interested in joining Miramar Golf Club but new membership there is currently closed due to the airport annexing a third of their grounds. They haven't yet decided whether they should become a 9-hole course or a thirteen-hole course.

Mornington Golf Club uses the public Berhampore golf course as its course. 

Established in 1916 and based at the Berhampore Golf Course in Wellington, NZ, Mornington Golf Club was founded as a public course to make golf accessible. Originally the Wellington Municipal Golf Club, it rebranded in 1919 and has operated for over 100 years on a challenging, hilly 18-hole layout in the Wellington Town Belt.

Key Historical Highlights
Establishment (1915-1916): Founded following efforts by Dr. Robert A. Cameron to create a public course, which officially opened on October 30, 1915, as the Wellington Municipal Golf Club.
Renaming (1919): The men's club became known as the Mornington Golf Club, and the women's club merged to form the Mornington Ladies Golf Club.
Sunday Play Battles: Early in its history, the club was involved in legal battles to allow golf to be played on Sundays, which was eventually permitted.
Centenary (2016): The club celebrated its centenary over the Wellington Anniversary weekend in January 2016.
Community Hub: Known as a friendly,, multi-sport complex, the club now hosts various activities including disc golf and indoor bowls.
Located only five minutes from central Wellington, the course offers a hilly terrain with, historically, a largely unchanged, challenging layout.

 - Google AI Overview

I can attest to the "largely unchanged, challenging layout".

The original clubrooms next to Wakefield Park are now used by Wellington Soccer and the club has taken over the old and larger Mornington Bowling Club premises. Sadly the bowling club greens are now unused.

I used to play at Berhampore golf course when I was at school. 

At first my brother and I played with some Vogeltown friends when we were quite young. We bought an old set of clubs that would be valuable antiques now if they were still intact. They had hickory wood shafts and quaint Scottish names like 'Mashie',  MacTosh', Driving Iron', Niblick', 'Jigger', 'Blaster', 'Brassie', 'Baffy' and 'Spoon'. We had to scavenge in the gorse bushes to find balls to play with (golf balls back in the 1960s were comparatively much more expensive than they are today) and if we found some very good ones we would sell these to adult players for a half-crown.

Later, at college Chelman, Christiansen, Lyons, Romijn and occasional others would play most Saturday mornings - early at 7AM. It was an 18 hole course with 9 holes each side of Island Bay Parade then. I remember every Friday night really looking forward to the next morning and staying up too late watching on TV 'The Wild Wild West' and afterwards Sam Snead's golf programme hoping to get some tips. 

At university I used to occasionally play at Berhampore with Tony, Mike, Roger and sometimes Richard. I gave Tony some of the old antique golf clubs to play with to replace the hockey stick he had, having bought a few new Slazenger clubs for myself. This didn't make either of us better players. The course had changed to 13 holes on one side of the road and 5 holes on the other which never seemed as good. I guess that the fact that two of the holes on the 9 hole course on the East side of The Parade required hitting over Mount Albert Road from the tees worried some city traffic planners (and their lawyers) which forced the layout change.

The course always was a challenge being known as a 'goat track' and was, and still is host to what seems like Wellington's largest quota of gorse bushes. Initially I regretted joining as my golf play on my first outings was atrocious but the last couple of times I've improved and 'found my mojo'. I was thinking that the course is too challenging for me (almost every hole is severely uphill or downhill) but playing a few more times should increase my fitness and stamina.

I'll end this first part with an interesting historical fact.

Shelley's older relatives (maybe aunty and uncle or great aunty and great uncle) almost bought a house in either Emerson Street or Stanley Street next to Berhampore golf course.

I would never have known this if I hadn't taken one of Richard's Bass Bag tours of Wellington. This was one of the more interesting highlights of the tour of course.