There is much about John Stam that his fellow Portsea members probably don’t know. Not least that his name is actually Johannes and to those who have known him for a long time he’s simply Hans.
His parents were Dutch migrants who arrived in Melbourne when their son was 10. His journey to the golf club he regards as home was anything but straightforward.
After leaving school at 16 he worked as a labourer at Lord’s Bluestone Quarries in Brooklyn, before joining his father’s car repair garage in Newport “as a panel beater come spray painter come whatever”. His great love was diving in Port Phillip Bay – until a customer who was an ear, nose and throat specialist detected an ear issue and told him to stay out of the water.
One weekend some mates took him to Yarra Bend for a hit and he thought, “This golf isn’t too bad.” He went to the Newport sports store, bought a 3-wood, 7 and 5 iron, sand wedge and putter and headed down to Myers Flat by the Maribyrnong River to hit some balls. Soon after, another garage customer gave him an old driver.
“I put a peg in the ground, ball on top, and hit the best drive I’ve ever hit in my life all the way to the foot of Footscray Park. I thought, ‘Jeez, this is a good game!’ Except for one thing – I couldn’t repeat it! Next ball, sliced it. Next ball, topped it …”
John regarded anywhere past Spotswood as “up there” but was soon playing with mates at Beacon Hills. On one long-ago weekend his crew kept driving until they could go no further and he played at Portsea for the first time. On the practice putting green in front of the original clubhouse he spotted his old quarry boss, John Lord.
“He said, ‘Lad, what are you doing here?’
And I said, ‘I’ve just had a game of golf Mr Lord.’
I was 30 by then but you always called him Mr Lord. He was like a retired general – tall, moustache, a man of substance.
“Mr Lord said to me, ‘Did you like it?’
“And I said, ‘Yes, it’s beautiful.’
“He said, ‘Why don’t you join?’
“I said, ‘Mr Lord, I don’t know anybody here.’
“And he said, ‘But you know me.’”
A fortnight later John received a letter requesting he come to Portsea and play with a member. He thinks he “might have hit half a dozen good balls and sank one decent putt. And I was a member.”
By now he was running his father’s garage and living in Domain Road near Melbourne Grammar, which shaved some time off the four-hour Newport-Portsea round trip. Many Portsea members he met had holiday homes on the Peninsula, so John walked into a Blairgowrie real estate agent was driven to Driftwood Avenue in Rye, and bought what was then the only house in the street.
“My wife Vlasta was from near Prague in the old Czechoslovakia. I went home and told her, ‘I’ve put a deposit on a house.’ She said, ‘You could have told me!’ I drove her down there and we couldn’t find it! Anyway, we were there forever, Vlasta loved it.”
Kevin Hartley (left) with John (Right)
So began many happy years of packing the car after work on Friday, loading up their Labradors and leaving the city behind. John says his late wife was a home body who didn’t mind him spending the day on the golf course, at a time when 50 members contesting the Saturday competition was a good turnout.
He’d often play Sunday mornings too with Phillip and Craig Jewell, Fred Hunt, former policeman Joe Murphy (who became his Blairgowrie neighbour and great mate) and others. “Vlasta would meet us at the Portsea pub afterwards. It was like heaven on earth.”
A fond memory is arriving for the Pro-Am one year with the car laden with food that had been prepared by Vlasta, including her superb crayfish salad. When John went to get a serve later in the day, it was all gone. “Peter Thomson had seconds,” he laughs.
He got his handicap down to 11 and won the amateur section of the Pro-Am one year, “one of those days when you can’t miss”. A pro he played with that day offered to give him a couple of lessons that he swore would improve his game by several shots.
John wins the best amateur prize in the 1980 Portsea Pro Am
“That sounded like music. I turned up, he changed my grip: ‘This is wrong, that’s wrong.’ Different stance, different everything. I came home and went to a paddock, and never hit one good ball. I went from 11 to 26. Slice, slice …”
He likes the fair dinkum, “shake hands” people he’s known at Portsea who don’t stand on ceremony or care about his name or upbringing. Anyone else can please themselves. John doesn’t easily bend and remembers standing his ground in the face of pressure for his group to play faster.
“I said to them, that’s not how we used to play golf. We weren’t all bosom buddies, but we played a round together and we applauded each other’s shots. At the end of the day, if you have to wait five minutes, so what? I love the game, and I’ve loved the people I’ve played with.”
After one of a series of heart issues, someone suggested he join Beacon Hills. He did (while keeping his Portsea membership going), slipped and fell on the first fairway and had mud from neck to knee. “It was mud in winter and concrete in summer. I stayed a couple of years, got a hole in one and my name on the board, but the crowd I knew at Portsea were better.”
He only gets to the club a couple of times a year now but it immediately feels like home. “Not everyone I see down there is a friend of mine, but there are no enemies either.
“I walked onto the first tee one day not long ago and someone said, ‘Are you going to join are you?’”
With great pride, Johannes Stam replied, “No, I’ve already joined. Fifty years ago.”