John Humphries has walked, watered and groomed probably every blade of grass at Chisholm Park.
He has played there in the middle of the night, has redesigned greens and tees and seen golfing figures such as Kel Nagle and Sam Torrance play on the course.
But it is all coming to an end next month, for when Humphries turns 65 on September 16, he will walk away from the job as turf manager at the golf course.
After 41 years, Humphries has decided to call it a day at the course and a tournament was held in his honour yesterday.
More than 80 people turned up, including family and friends from overseas, to honour him and celebrate a career which started off over a drink at St Clair Golf Club in the 1960s.
"I was a bootmaker and got paid out of my time with McKinlay's. I was up playing at St Clair and afterwards over a drink I was saying how I wanted an outside job. Someone said there was a job going here. So I became an assistant at St Clair in 1965," he said.
From there he worked at the Balmacewen course and also Belleknowes, before heading north to Nelson and Palmerston North.
"But I came back for a cobber's wedding and they had just had a Festival Cup and Jimmy Barnes said they needed a greenkeeper for Chisholm Park. So on February 13, 1970, I started."
Apart from a short spell at a couple of South Canterbury courses in 1974 he has been at Chisholm Park ever since.
He said there had been many changes to golf and the course over the years, and much of the challenge had gone out of the sport.
"I'm a bit of a traditionalist. The way they have come out with these new clubs has given guys a lot more range. But it shouldn't be too easy. You shouldn't be able to just land it on the green and have to make an easy putt.
"They brought in yardage markers, which I don't know about. I think a true golfer has to show some skill."
Humphries, a 12-handicapper, has redesigned half the greens and most of the tees of a course, which was opened in 1939. His favourite holes on the course are seven and nine.
A links course was always fun and never easy, he said.
"It is constantly changing. One day it can brown and rolling. Then the clouds come in, the wind starts up, you get a couple of days of rain and it gets nice and green. A pro tournament we had here once, on the first day we had 69 players under par, the next day it blew and there were two under par. They couldn't tell where the wind was coming from."
He said the weather had changed through the years, with winters lengthening, and summers not being as consistent.
When he first started, irrigation was limited and watering the course was all done by hand.
"Greg Turner asked me to water the course one night for 10 minutes. I had a look at the weather, thought it might rain so I didn't do anything. And it didn't rain. He came up to me the next day and said that was fine, and to do it half as much again.
"You sometimes had to move the hoses through the night. I remember one night when there was a really bright moon taking an eight iron out and playing the course by the light of the moon."
