Geraldine club wins Golf NZ’s Club of the Year award
A small South Canterbury golf club has aced the biggest of wins at sport’s national awards in being named Golf New Zealand’s Club of the Year.
The Geraldine District Golf Club, with a membership of 200, has been recognised as a club that “punches way above its weight class” with the Golf New Zealand award praise centring on how the once struggling club is now thriving on the back of hard work based on a new board structure.
“Yeah I was most definitely stunned to find out,” the club’s services manager Chris Phillips said of the award presented at a gala dinner in Christchurch on Monday.
There almost wasn’t any club representative present to accept the award on the second day of the NZ Golf Matters conference until someone from Golf NZ was forced to break the winning news to the Phillips who said that was the only way they could get someone to be there.
“It was 11am Monday morning and I got a call from Richard Hudson from Golf NZ who told me to come to the conference on Monday. I was speaking on Tuesday at the conference, and we had a board meeting on the Monday so I said I couldn’t go.
“That is when he told me we had won club of the year. He had to outright tell me because he knew I wouldn’t have come earlier otherwise.
“So I got hold of the president of the club, Will Polson, and we headed to Christchurch.”
Phillips said there are more than 380 golf clubs in New Zealand and all of them can put their name forward for the award.
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