Golf: Back at the old swinging grounds

Walter Godfrey plays a shot during last weekend's City of Dunedin Legends Pro-Am at Balmacewen. Photo by Craig Baxter.

Strictly speaking, Walter Godfrey retired "from everything" about two years ago.

A combination of eyesight problems and other physical deterioration, attributed to his advancing years - he turned 68 in October - convinced him it was time to ease out of competitive golf and take it easy.

Yet here he is, sitting in the sun outside the Otago Golf Club's clubhouse at Balmacewen, having just signed for a creditable 3-over-par 74 on the first day of the City of Dunedin Legends Pro-Am - but still wishing he was back home in Sydney.

"To come to New Zealand seemed like a good idea. I hadn't been down to the South Island for years and it's a great place . . . but now I just feel like going home.

"It's hard to enjoy something that you could do reasonably well years ago and even though you get older should still be able to play respectably, like Charlie [Sir Bob Charles]; he's 73, I'm 68.

"But it becomes difficult. I lose focus easy. I don't get angry, I just get annoyed that I can't hit the shots that I can see in my head but I can't do."

Despite his obvious disappointment, Godfrey admits with a laugh he only has himself to blame for not practising enough, something he puts down to his reconstructed left shoulder lacking power, and his failing eyesight.

Today's round is the best score he's recorded since he left Sydney a fortnight earlier for what he thought might be a "nice little tour" including new events for senior golfers at Millbrook, Queenstown and Dunedin.

And it's his first competitive round of golf at Balmacewen since he finished tied for third with David Good behind Peter Thomson and Maurice Bembridge in the 1971 New Zealand Open, the year Thomson won a record ninth Open.

In those days, Godfrey was among New Zealand and Australia's leading golfers and a regular visitor to Dunedin, competing several times in the Otago Charity Classic at St Clair, finishing third equal to Charles the weekend after the 1971 Open.

Godfrey's golfing career got off to a sensational start when he won the New Zealand Amateur Championship at St Andrews, Hamilton, in 1958, aged just 16, the youngest to win the title and matched only by Danny Lee in 2007.

But while he still clearly remembers that first title 52 years ago, Godfrey claims he was "lucky" to win because the best amateurs at the time - Charles, Ted MacDougall, John Durry and Stuart Jones - were playing in the first Eisenhower Trophy, the world's leading event for amateurs, in Scotland.

Godfrey would himself play in the next two Eisenhowers, in North America and Japan, where New Zealand finished fifth and fourth respectively.