“I’m only working six days week now,” he said with a laugh.
“Though I do try to take off Saturday afternoons and play a game of golf a week.”
With a 4 handicap (less than 2.5 per cent of male golfers play at 4 handicap), Mike has played with a lot of champions and during the mid 1970s, had a rare ringside seat next to a blond-haired dynamo on the rise.
“Greg Norman grew up in my era and we played in some of the same events in 1975,” he said.
“A year later, he’d won his first pro tournament and was away.”
Mike said champion Brad Lincoln was the best player the club has produced and he has fond memories of a young Cameron Smith when he won the Australian Boys’ Championship at Carnarvon by eight strokes in 2011.
“He was just so impressive in the way he handled a game that wasn’t going his way, with no tantrum just put his head down and kept going,” he said.
Made a Life Member of Carnarvon in 2021, Mike was not only ‘the face’ of the club but the ‘voice’ as he was the starter for most comps and can greet most of the club’s 900 members by name.
“Dealing with the public keeps me young,” the 67-year-old said.
“The diversity of the people is the thing I love about the job.
“I love golf but early on I realised there’s a big difference between playing the game well and being really, really good at it; I’ve certainly got no regrets.”
