Kel Nagle, Australia’s Legendary Golfer

I spent my only night sleeping in the car on the 2-1/2 month “Golf Journey to Australia & New Zealand” but it was worth it to meet and spend a couple of hours with Kel Nagle and his buddies David Mercer and John Holiday.

Let me explain. It was the day before the ‘Golf Journey to Australia’ ended with a flight from Sydney over to Queenstown to continue the odyssey in New Zealand. I had completed the Australian Trifecta, going to Melbourne for The Masters, back to Sydney for the Open and then up to Brisbane and the Golf Coast for the PGA Championship. There, after seeing Greg Chalmers beat Adam Scott in a playoff on the 18^th in the 7^th round after Wade Ormsby was knocked out in the 3^rd round, I was invited to play the RACV Royal Pines Golf Course the next day in a ‘Play the Course the Pros Played’ outing. Of course I accepted the invitation, played and for the record shot 39 on the new Graham Marsh-designed front nine. Thank you very much Graham Marsh for that insightful, walk-the-front-nine interview on Saturday morning! The event ended at 3 pm Monday afternoon about 950 kilometers north of the Terrey Hills Nursing Home where Kel lived and we had a tea time at 10:30 am on Tuesday. That’s about a 10-hour drive and there wasn’t time to get a hotel room and sleep a conventional night (nor was it in the budget). So I drove and stopped and napped when needed.

When I met Kel in his room I had the same reaction as when I first entered the Terrey Hills Nursing Home. For somebody five days shy of his 94^th birthday he looked and acted to me like somebody turning 74. The place was not what the name implies, especially for Kel who readily admitted that it was only because of the lower half of his body, not above the waist as he gestured, that he lived there. His mind, his spirit and his bright smile were all fully present.

Kel lived in ‘Dormie Corner’ at Terrey Hills as evidenced by the nameplate outside his room (which was more like a suite). I never asked him about it but I took the name to mean a good place to be in any match—in the lead by as many holes as are still to be played. Outside his room was a mural of the Old Course at St. Andrews, a tribute and reminder to all of his victory there over Arnold Palmer in the centenary year of the Open Championship. The staff at the Thompson Health Care facility were warm and friendly and readily admitted in writing and more importantly by their actions that “residents do not live in our facilities, we work in their homes.”

Kel, David and John were great guys and I enjoyed the two hours we spent together talking about golf and indirectly about life. It was ironic to me that the Sydney terrorist hostage crisis at the Lindt Chocolate Café in Martin Place in downtown Sydney was on the television during our visit. Sadly, the siege had ended just after 2 am that morning with the deaths of two innocent victims. While only 25 kilometers from where we were, the unexplainable violence seemed a world away from the gentlemen I was sitting with and the game of golf. Why I wondered can’t differences be resolved without the taking of life in what seems to otherwise be a civilized world?

Kel told most of the stories though David and John interjected occasionally with some banter of their own. Kel met David at the Killara Golf Club a long time ago where David became a golf professional in 1953 and Kel went to practice when home. Though he still remembered that David had “taught him all his bad habits.” John became an apprentice in David’s shop later in the 1950s. I just sat there and smiled thinking that these three guys had known each other for the last 60 years. It was a magical time, no different than when you are paired up with some new friends on the first tee of most any golf course in the world.

I loved hearing Kel Nagle tell golf stories. I just sat there and took 14 pages of notes, some amazingly that I am able to read. He started playing golf at age 6 with an old knobby stick from his father’s orchard. When he met his wife as a teenager he told her mother “one day I will be a champion.” Teamed up with the great Peter Thomson to win two World Cups (then Canada Cups) and credits him with noting that he was playing well and telling him that he could win the Open the week before while competing in the Canada Cup at Portmarnock. Arnold Palmer telling him that he “had a habit of getting in his way.” After his loss to Nagle, Palmer would win the Open the next two years at Royal Birkdale and Troon to pave the way for American golfers to compete regularly in golf’s world championship.

When I asked him who his favorite player to watch on television was he quickly replied without hesitation that it was Jordan Spieth, the American who had won the Australian Open two weeks earlier at the Australian Golf Club in Sydney.

That made me think of the comment made by Troy Grant, the Deputy Premier Minister for Tourism, in the Awards Ceremony on the 18th green, that Jordan is a “credit to golf and a credit to his country.” Here I was sitting in the presence of Kel Nagle, one of Australia’s and the game’s legendary golfers and a true gentleman. The lineage is Australian golfing greats is well represented as World Golf Hall of Fame members—Walter Travis, Peter Thomson, Kel Nagle, Greg Norman, Karrie Webb and soon to be inducted this year—David Graham.

One of the last things Kel Nagle said to me before I left and he could have his lunch, with a wry smile of course, was “it’s a good game, isn’t it.”

Yes it is Mr. Nagle and thanks to you and David Mercer and John Holiday y’all have put the cherry on the cake I call the “Golf Journey to Australia.” Much appreciated!

 

Editor’s Note:

Subsequent to the visit I learned Kel Nagle has passed on January 28^th, 2015. I was shocked as he looked so healthy and full of vigor only a month an d a half ago. It was an honor and privilege to meet and spend some time with a true golfing legend. He and David and John were also some of the nicest men I met on the “Golf Journey to Australia and New Zealand.”

My thoughts?

“Dormie no more,” as the great champion golfer finished his round victorious in life and has entered the great clubhouse above. My thoughts, prayers and sympathy go out to the family and friends of Mr. Nagle.