Two Cambridge women point to technology as the major reason they are still playing golf after 60 and 40 years respectively.
Cambridge Golf Club’s longest-serving members Gaye Bezzant, left, and Betty Harvey, still playing today. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
Gaye Bezzant, 87, and Betty Harvey, 90 next month, say their careers were extended following the invention of battery-powered trundlers which made walking the golf course and pulling a heavy golf bag and clubs so much easier.
Both were single figure golfers in their days – testified by the fact their names appear on the ladies’ championship board at the club – and a large turnout is expected at a special celebration for them later today (Thursday).
Television and radio personality Kay Gregory, a keen golfer herself and a regular player at the Stewart Alexander course near Te Awamutu, will interview them in front of a packed clubhouse of family and friends.
“We’ve been so lucky,” says Betty who took up the game 40 years ago after success at tennis and squash.
“There weren’t that many senior golfers like us still around when I started. They had to give up golf because there were no electric trundlers around then and they couldn’t walk 18 holes, they had to give up, poor souls.”
Cambridge Golf Club’s longest-serving members Gaye Bezzant, left, and Betty Harvey, still playing today. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
Betty who on non-golf days gets in an early morning five kilometre walk around St Kilda where she and husband Barry live after years in Te Miro, uses a cart now after an operation on her knee and tends to stick to nine hole competitions.
Gaye still gets the odd round of 18 in after 60 years playing golf and after a recent hip operation is back playing as a nine-holer.
She became Cambridge’s 41st inductee on the Duke Street Sports Walk of Fame two years ago for her prowess as an international softball representative and for representing Waikato in softball, netball, basketball and golf.
Their memories are boundless – we would have needed hours – but it is the friendships and community spirit fostered through golf which thread through their time at the club.
“When I started in 1974, I was in awe of Gaye because she was a low handicapper,” says Betty.
Women playing with the men was frowned on as were shorts and slacks.
“We all had to wear skirts, and they had to be below your knee and your sleeves had to become below your elbows,” says Gaye.
Ladies Golf Union rules were strict – women had to finish out every hole or be disqualified while men had ‘gimmies’ which she insists some of them would never have got.
Etiquette was critical – walking near a golfer’s line of eyesight for example was a no no and still is today but is something many modern day players forget.
Gaye was once the top qualifier in the New Zealand championships at New Plymouth Golf Club but crashed out in the first round of match play.
Both played pennants and interclub competitions for years playing with and against some of the best golfers Waikato ever produced.
Each has a soft spot for the Walton Golf Club, nicknamed the gem of New Zealand golf, and for the Te Awamutu course with all its trees but both say it is Cambridge – established in 1900 and Waikato’s oldest golf club – they love.
The course itself has changed in their time – the last when three new holes were created to the east of the Fergusson (Low Level Bridge) and the rest of the course adapted.
Cambridge Golf Club’s longest-serving members Gaye Bezzant, left, and Betty Harvey, still playing today. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
There are plans to develop housing on the unused parts of the course which both ladies say they might have opposed years ago but not now.
Times have changed, fewer people are able to volunteer and help out at the club.
“I used to come in on the statutory days and work as a volunteer so the girls could have some holidays,” says Gaye. Other members would look after the gardens around the course.
But it is the people they both remember. They look up at the boards and run through the names recalling something about them, the ones who were “snooty”, competitive, strict on etiquette, friendly and great friends.
“We had some great old ladies we played with. We are lucky to be playing, they are not,” says Betty.
More than 100 people from around the Waikato were expected to attend the reunion at Cambridge Golf Club today.
Cambridge Golf Club’s longest-serving members Gaye Bezzant, left, and Betty Harvey, still playing today. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
