Origins of the Pro-Am
Through the 1980s and `90s heyday of its original incarnation, the staging of a Pro-Am event in the first week of January afforded Portsea a prestige that extended far beyond Point Nepean. It’s 2023 rebirth – bigger and better than ever – was an early 100th birthday present to be cherished.
The PGA representatives who approached the match sub-committee in January 1975 proposing that an annual Portsea Pro-Am be held at the height of the summer holiday season were clearly onto something. Captain Bob Roberts and vice-captain Alan Beckwith embraced the idea enthusiastically, and approval was granted to conduct the inaugural Portsea Pro-Am on January 24, 1976. It was soon brought forward to the first week of the new year, to avoid a clash with a similar event in Sydney.
Fast forward half a century, and outgoing club captain Adam Trescowthick captures what having this annual jewel back on the calendar after an 11-year hiatus means to the club. “It’s a really important part of who we are – our big outward-facing event every year. (Its return) sent a message: ‘You’re back, you’re going forward.’ As much as anything, the marketing and the profile has definitely had an impact on membership.”
The Pro-Am also showcases the wonders that members who care deeply about their club can achieve. Events of this magnitude don’t just happen. In essence, the Pro-Am is a celebration of Portsea’s people and their willingness to muck in, some via sponsorship and others through countless hours and effort voluntarily given in their club’s name.
Building Prestige on the Peninsula
The three hundred thousand dollar turnover of the 2025 event was a far cry from 1976, when Sorrento Real Estate stumped up $2000 as the pioneering sponsor and Peter Thomson and Steve Caldow were the inaugural winners. Canberra Television stepped up for the next two years, before a clutch of local businesses – Sorrento Real Estate, Ivan Croad Motors, Ray Nightingale Pharmacy, Rosebud Paint & Paper and Twiggy’s Shoes – helped keep the fledgling event ticking along.
Many nameless and tireless supporters have played their part since, not least the members who slipped flyers into every letterbox west of Dromana after Canberra Television stepped away in 1979. Others, like Jeff Wilde, Norm Mallett, Gerry Kivlighon and Syd Thomson in the early days, and Trescowthick in driving its rebirth, have given so much to the Pro-Am cause their contribution demands acknowledgement.
As does that of Lawrence Heraty, the American who carried Bob Shearer’s bag in five career wins including the 1982 Australian Open, who with wife Donna took the job of Portsea administrator in 1984, and with Wilde made a concerted push to “kick things up a bit” on the Pro-Am front. Wilbur says of the realignment: “Lawrence told them, ‘We don’t want boxes of stale chocolates (as sponsorship) anymore, we want money.’”
Heraty laughs at the appraisal and has a more prosaic recall. “I thought there could be a bit more money involved and that could bring more prestige – a bit more window-dressing in sponsorship signage. We brought in a jazz band, tried to make it a bit of a different, fun atmosphere.”
Party at the Pro-Am
Teeing off from the current 10th at the 1989 Pro-Am
Shearer’s Carlton & United Breweries connections were key. “Bob was a Foster’s (Lager) man, he did adverts for them,” Kathie Shearer says of her late husband. The event became the Foster’s Portsea Pro-Am, and later the Carlton. Heraty recalls naming rights coming in return for a $5000 cash contribution and “product”, in the form of 150 boxes of beer that went behind the bar. At length, Wilde successfully convinced the CUB reps that “it’s only product to you”. The offering was bumped up to 250 slabs – sponsorship gold, costing nothing and with every cent from sales going to the club.
As the event’s reputation for quality golf on a wonderful course (and a surefire good time) continued to grow, people came from near and far. Shearer was a Southern Golf Club native, and encouraged his mates to support the event. Kathie remembers the Southern crew bringing Eskys mounted on wheels using occy straps (an early take on mobile luggage), throwing themselves into proceedings and having a wow of a time.
Shearer would enlist a driver and they’d set off from Melbourne in the early hours. Kathie says exactly when he’d return was something of a lottery (“they wouldn’t book anywhere to stay – they probably should have!”). She would simply hope he was feeling human again by their January 10 wedding anniversary. Wilde remembers Shearer and another Portsea stalwart, Ian Stanley, in the old Koonya Hotel after one Pro-Am, drinking with CUB reps, armed with pitching wedges, chipping balls across the room into pot glasses. “There’d be glass everywhere.”
At least one divorce can be partially attributed to the Portsea Pro-Am (“one wife said, ‘If you go to the Pro-Am again I’m leaving – he went, and she left”). Yet Kathie’s memories of the Pro-Ams she attended are filled with music and revelry and happiness.
“It was almost like it was, ‘Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day, Portsea Pro-Am’ – that’s how important it was.”
Legendary Players
Peter Thomson putting for the course record at Pro-Am – 1977
Mike Clayton was a regular whose two victories in the event came almost two decades apart. He remembers all the stars of the time playing – Shearer, Stanley, Ian Baker-Finch and of course Thomson. “Everyone played in it. Peter Thomson didn’t play in Pro-Ams, so if it was good enough for Peter Thomson to play, it was good enough for us to play in it.”
Pre-tournament Pro-Ams can be box-ticking affairs that fulfil sponsorship requirements, whereas Portsea tapped into the vibe of the Queensland winter circuit built on competitive off-season golf with the prospect of decent prizemoney.
“It was easily the best field of any Pro-Am of the year,” Clayton says. “Everyone was trying to play well and make a cheque.”
By the late 1990s the field was dotted with European Tour regulars. In the lead-up to the 2001 World Matchplay Championships, played at Metropolitan, Jean van de Velde was having a game with Clayton and asked, “What’s the go with that Portsea Pro-Am? Can I get a game?” The Frenchman was a big name in world golf at the time, not least after a near-certain 1999 British Open win foundered in Barry Burn next to Carnoustie’s 18th green.
“I rang them up, they said, ‘We’re not sure we can fit him in,’” Clayton recalls. “I was like, ‘Are you kidding?’” Van de Velde duly played at Portsea on the Tuesday with Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett, enjoyed the course and had a lovely time, then defeated Duffy Waldorf and Retief Goosen at Metro over the next two days before losing to Ernie Els on the 19th in the World Matchplay third round. “So it didn’t do him any harm,” Clayton says.
Sponsorship and Strategy
‘Wilbur’ Wilde would take two weeks off work and launch himself headlong into making the event sing. His hotel and restaurant background came with entertainment industry connections. In 1992 a marquee was introduced adjacent to the first hole and acts like Russell Morris, Babba and “the fake Three Tenors” were added to the bill. Kids activities kept a family dimension among the festival feel.
By then Mallett was playing a critical behind-the-scenes role. He remembers being buttonholed as soon as he became a member in 1989 and asked/told: “How about looking after the Pro-Am?” Something of a marketing pioneer through his work in the paint industry, he embraced the value of bringing rigour and documentation to the annual event.
“It was pretty ad-hoc – I called it ‘Jeff’s Day Out’ for a while,” he laughs. “It got beyond one person.”
The key plank in Mallett’s push for accountability was the formation of a strategic plan to guide the Pro-Am each year, which he drafted at the start of a decade spent chairing the event. Point one was the non-negotiable bedrock: it must be “risk-free” for the club, with sponsors paying for everything. “The event could be watered down by lack of professionals, it could be washed away by rain,” he says. “There had to be no risk to the club.”
Sponsorship packages were detailed – number of car parking places, number of spots in the Pro-Am, number of drinks packages, etcetera. With Kivlighon, Mallett set a budget that removed any grey and ensured everything was accounted for, whether bought or in return for sponsorship. “We brought a certain degree of formality to it.”
The ‘CUB-Portsea Pro-Am Strategic Review’ established a road map of guiding principles that embraced the theory of recurring events, and could be tailored to guide the Seniors Pro-Am, Portsea Open Amateur and other annuals. Sponsors were locked in for multiple years rather than a single event, meaning signage could be built, stored and used again. Infrastructure was installed, including running power beneath the old first fairway to feed the temporary grandstands and marquee. “We put all of that on paper,” Mallett says.
Fosters Sponsorship on the 1st tee at the 1989 Pro-Am
Sponsors who would agree to hold trade days at the club throughout the year were targeted, with incentives including green fee passes and playing rights for a defined period. Prizemoney could rank no lower than third on the PGA Victorian Pro-Am circuit. With structure and organisation came ambition – the 1995 instalment included a mission to “develop facilities, expertise and public image in order to secure a major PGA tournament (such at the Victorian Open) by 1997”.
2001 Foster’s Pro-Am Poster
While this never came to pass, the engagement of club members in the myriad operational tasks required to put on a Pro-Am – acting as car parking attendants, spotters and referees, marshalling galleries and generally setting up and taking down all that would appear as if by magic at this madly-busy time on the calendar – engendered even greater pride in their club. Parking duties were eventually handed to the local surf lifesaving and Rotary clubs, spreading the Pro-Am love.
Heraty says the sheer volume of physical work that Wilde would pour into the lead-in each year, not to mention his contacts, were vital. “We couldn’t have done what we did – no way, shape or form – without Wilbur.” Key to his investment was the knowledge that the toil would annually be rewarded with lots of fun. This only increased when the marquee was erected in time for New Year’s Eve and filled with music and 350 revellers, some of whom might still have been there when the first tee shot was struck two days later.
Stories and Memories
Funny stories abound. Like the year the Pro-Am fell on a Wednesday – ladies day at Portsea, of course – and Brendan Davern and a few mates arrived on the first tee dressed as women and insisted on their right to play. John Kelloway, whose work announcing players was a warm staple (and who may have had a behind-the-scenes role in this particular hi-jinx), formally announced the motley crew, who teed off to much mirth then promptly disappeared.
Another year, a raffle supporting a local community group was drawn on Pro-Am day. Tickets sold off-site had been collected and stored in the club safe. A couple of days after the event they were found, still in the safe, having never made it into the barrel for the draw.
The first appearance of women in the Pro-Am field gave rise to a story Mallett recalls as a nod to a less politically correct time. The gallery alongside the then 18th (current 8th) hole watched with admiration as a striking young woman hit a beautiful drive up over the hill. “In the moment of silence that followed someone yelled out, ‘But can she cook?’”
Among Heraty’s tweaks to the event was to annually target an up-and-coming amateur and invite them to play. This included a young Robert Allenby, who hit his first Portsea Pro-Am drive into the marquee and shot an 84. Wilde remembers Allenby coming back the following year accompanied by a mob of mates who called him “Mr 84” and squirted him with water pistols.
Robert Allenby at the 1997 Pro-AM
Footballers and celebrities of all sorts were regular features, with great excitement around watching athletes who could coolly strut their stuff in front of 90,000 at the MCG go to water on the first tee with the Portsea gallery watching on. The year Sam Newman was rude to car parking attendants, who in response ignored his roof-down convertible when an afternoon storm rolled through, still brings chuckles. The football showman’s on-course behaviour drawing the ire of the famously placid Shearer won’t be soon forgotten either. Says Clayton: “If you upset Bob Shearer, you were in the wrong.”
The weather gods put on a show in 1993, when the biggest Pro-Am field (256) filled the course. A classic “four seasons in one day” affair began in thick fog, gave way to stifling heat and humidity, and was followed by a temperature plummet, lightning, wild wind and rain in the afternoon. Mallett manned the ninth tee, St Bernard-like, armed with a bottle of port for those in need. The leading groups had to come back the next day to finish their rounds; henceforth, the field was restricted to 216 with a shotgun start.
Wilde remembers “some moments” involving the marquee and extreme weather, and another day when an electrical storm hit while he was in the CUB caravan. “I said, ‘Jeez, it’s dangerous out there!’ And the bloke next to me replied, ‘Are you serious? We’re stuck in a steel caravan!’”
Heraty was significant in ensuring things never got out of hand and golf’s required decorum was maintained. One year, footballers who skylarked on course were chastised and not invited again. Radio guru John Blackman was similarly rebuked, and had the good sense and manners to apologise to the club. Warning noted, he was welcomed back. “Lawrence made sure it didn’t turn into some rubbish event where people made arses of themselves,” Wilde says.
A middle ground was required. Mallett notes that Kelloway, an accountant by profession, had a knack for lightening the mood without breaching the formality of a PGA-sanctioned event. “He could introduce people and create a bit of a buzz at the same time – formal introduction, then he’d have a bit of fun. He was magic on the mic.”
A New Beginning
In 1999 the event was crowned PGA Pro-Am of the Year, a gong the game’s governors might have created in order to piggyback off it’s success. Portsea won the next year too; Mallett’s blueprint underpinned an event that became a model for other clubs to ape. Yet all good things come to an end, or at least get tired and need a spell. With construction of a new clubhouse underway and sponsorship becoming harder to secure, the 2012 Pro-Am proved to be the last in more than a decade.
Mallett was unfazed, knowing that enthusiasm among volunteers can wane over time, and even the best events need rejuvenating. He also knew the strategic plan was ready to guide a rebirth, whenever that might come. “You go back to your blueprint, see what you did before, then go again.”
Trescowthick’s election as captain in 2021, alongside president Phil Cramer, opened the door for the Pro-Am’s revival. A Portsea member when the event was humming, Trescowthick made putting it back on the January 2 calendar a priority. “Adam drove it,” Cramer says. “He said, ‘You do the Seniors Pro-am, and I’ll do this one.’”
A paper was presented to the board, who cautioned that perhaps they should take their time and aim for a year further down the track. Trescowthick and his team ploughed on, working throughout 2022 on a January `23 return, enlisting old mate and events/sponsorship gun Jo Stuckey to help market and sell the event.
“She was unbelievable, she got the naming rights sponsor (Rob Curtain’s Peninsula Sotheby’s) through an old contact. It was hard work – we started from zero with sponsors.”
Trescowthick calls the Pro-Am Portsea’s “13th month”. For all that goes into the event, what the club gets in return (via revenue, and arguably even moreso reputationally) is profound. “It’s the busiest time of the year, but in terms of revenue that comes in, it’s like an extra month,” General Manager John Burbergs says.
Members are actively engaged, contesting an order of merit event over four Saturdays for a spot in the field. The annual David Opie Medallist, AKA the king or queen of the Thursday chook-chuckers, earns a berth too. Many members sponsor the Pro-Am, which brings the right to play. A handful of spots can be bought as another funds generator with tangible benefit. More than 50 members help out as volunteers. Many flesh out the crowd.
The first year back was Burbergs’ first in the job. He credits golf administration guru Peter Stackpole with bringing the detail to complement Trescowthick’s vision, overseeing logistics from recruiting of pros to security to tee times to liquor licence. With Mallett’s Pro-Am syllabus as the foundation, a template for success continues to be built upon.
John, Phil and Adam at the 2025 Pro-Am
The “comeback” event proved something of a fairytale. Trescowthick had pushed hard for a bumper hole-in-one prize on the “party hole” 7th, and micro-betting firm betr duly put up $100,000. “Adam would send thought bubbles – early in the morning, late at night,” Burbergs recalls. “He just kept talking about the hole-in-one hole, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if it went off …’”
Like a gift from the gods, journeyman pro Daniel Beckmann – who had spent two years in the Alfred Hospital a decade earlier battling lymphoma – knocked a six-iron into the cup and the place went wild. Cameras recorded a teary moment that played on that evening’s news. Sunrise was on course the next morning. It was publicity you couldn’t buy.
In year one of its renaissance, Portsea was voted best Pro-Am in Victoria (repeated in 2025).
2024 Marquee
Each year back has been an investment in the next. What was essentially a big tent between the 7th green and 10th tee has grown via scaffolding and in 2026 will wrap around the green to accommodate even more sponsors and punters. The pre-Pro-Am cocktail party will pack the clubhouse while the annual after-party, featuring Steve Dundon’s Screaming Eagles, will play to 600-plus in the marquee.
Portsea member Dundon is at the heart of another 2026 advancement, in which footage from several holes will be beamed live into the marquee and clubhouse and onto big screens around the course. It’s a step towards potentially a full broadcast down the track.
Momentum is a mighty thing. The Pro-Am’s success has rubbed off on the Portsea Legends Pro-Am, which in 2026 will break new ground as a two-day event in early March shared with neighbour Sorrento.
Each club will host a round and a meal, with the format borrowing from the Pebble Beach Pro-Am where partners are drawn for the two-day event with prize pools on offer for the pros and a four-ball competition. Twenty-five members from each club will contest an event that exists on the back of member support. Higgins Coatings have been long-time sponsors (John Higgins and family are members), and in 2026 Lou Pascuzzi’s TLC Healthcare has naming rights.
“The idea of any Pro-Am is to get exposure, to market your club and your course,” says Taffy Richards, who while working with the PGA in the late 1990s helped put on a mini seniors “circuit” in Gippsland and the Peninsula that included the Portsea Legends. For Richards, Pro-Ams are simply another means for the club to contribute not just to its own health but that of the game. “We’ve always been at the forefront in Victoria.”
David Micheluzzi hitting towards the Marquee
To see the Portsea Pro-Am return, with a new clubhouse, a reconfigured layout and a familiar January 2 buzz fanning out from the halfway house and around the course, has been akin to watching a bright future come rushing into view. Norm Mallett couldn’t be more chuffed. An unforeseen reward for his toil is the beautiful glass trophy he won as leading amateur in 1993. It’s inscribed by Perry Fletcher, “the Etcher”, who would annually add his hand to the major Pro-Am prizes.
“I never won anything else,” Norm says.
Perhaps not, but his contribution to the Portsea Pro-Am will endure. And the event itself seems destined for a long and fruitful second coming.