Club history 1931-1991
On Tuesday 14th July 1931, the Masterton Agricultural and Pastoral Association convened a public meeting to consider a proposal to establish a golf course at the Association's Solway Showgrounds. The outcome of that meeting was that a Golf Club was formed to lease the area at a rental of £25 per annum. The Golf Club so formed adopted the name of Solway Golf Club. At that meeting, thirty five of those attending were signed up as inaugural members of the Solway Golf Club.
Work on Rules and a Constitution for the newly formed Club was carried out by Mr P. S. Page, and was adopted by the members at a meeting on 21st July 1931. At that meeting, Mr G. H. Perry was appointed President of the Club, and Mr P. S. Page was elected Club Captain. The meeting also decided that the new Club's colours would be black and gold. In addition, it was decided that lady members who were unable to play during the week for business reasons would be given full playing privileges at the week-end. The Club was initially restricted to seventy members.
On Saturday 10th August 1931, the nine hole Solway Golf Club was officially opened by the Mayor of Masterton, Mr T. Jordan. At the opening ceremony, the President, Mr G H Perry, stated his hope that the new Club would keep its fees low, as he felt that it was better to have people playing golf rather than looking on, while the Club Captain expressed his hope that the Club could expand to an 18 hole course as soon as possible. For the first year of operation, the subscriptions were set at the rate of 37/6, reducible to 30/- if paid within one month of election.
At the first Annual General Meeting of the Solway Golf Club, it was reported that the Club ended the first year with a credit balance of £24 8s 11p, and that there were no outstanding subscriptions. The membership of the Club had reached its initial limit of 70, and so the meeting raised the limit to 100 members.
On Tuesday 21st June 1932, the local golf professional, one E. W. Perry, played a round of what was termed moonlight golf with two members of the Club, G. Peterson and W.Ball. The latter player managed to use the same ball throughout the round, with the other players losing one ball each. The professional, E. W. Perry, finished with a round of 79, with Mr Peterson ending with a score of 85 and Mr Ball with an 87. During the 1932 season, the Solway Golf Club engaged in inter-club matches with the Eketahuna, Bideford, Riversdale and Greytown Golf Clubs, but the results of these matches do not appear to have been recorded. At the same time, two of the inaugural members and officials of the Club moved from the district, the Treasurer, a Mr E. Chisolm, and the Club Captain, Mr P. Page.
Co-operation with the other Clubs of the district was evident, and in 1934, the Club held a joint competition with the Riverside Golf Club over the Easter week-end, with the Saturday featuring a 35 hole medal round at the Solway Golf Club, and the Monday a Bogey competition at Riverside. Pressure on membership numbers resulted in the Annual General Meeting of the Solway Golf Club on 12th November 1934 increasing the allowable number of members by 50 mid-week members. The same meeting raised the question of acquiring new links on which it would be possible to lay out an 18 hole course. As a result, the Committee were empowered to proceed with further negotiations to achieve this end.
In early 1935, a Special General Meeting of the Club accepted the proposal to lease over 90 acres at Akura for the purpose of establishing a new 18 hole golf course. The area to be
leased was part of the Mahunga farm, and the Club resolved to change its name to the Mahunga Golf Club. The meeting also decided to increase the level of membership to 150,
which did not include the 50 mid-week members agreed to earlier. A great deal of work took place in the early part of the year on the new course, so that,when the Club had it's official opening on 13th April 1935, fourteen greens were already available for play, but only nine were used on the day. The new Clubhouse was not ready to be opened at the same time.
Saturday 13th July 1935 was the date that the Clubhouse was officially opened, and it was on the same day that the remaining four holes of the now eighteen hole course were
opened.
It was during the same year that the first two trophies for Inter club play involving the Mahunga Golf Club were presented. These Trophies were the Dominion Life InterClub Challenge Cup for the Men and the Rew and McCracken Cup for the Ladies. The Clubs involved in these challenge matches were Mahunga, Riverside and Bideford. On the playing front, another feature of the year was the first hole in one on the course by a member, Mr T. Hanley.
At the closing day function for the 1935 season, it was announced that the course would be kept in playing order throughout the summer. The membership of the Club was still growing at this stage, with the approved level of membership being increased to 200 ordinary, life and country members, and an additional 30 junior members. The ratio of Men to Lady members of the Club was left open for the Committee to decide. With the new course still in its infancy, it was decided to ask for outside assistance in laying out the greens. This assistance was sought from a prominent local golfer, Mr T. H. Horton, a member of the Masterton Golf Club, and Mr J. D. McIntosh from Wellington.
In the early part of 1937, the Mahunga Golf Club affiliated with the New Zealand Ladies Golf Union, and later that year the ladies formed their own committee to run their
matches. It was on 3rd April 1944 that Mr I I McGregor, Captain of the Club from 1936 until retiring in 1943, was elected the first Life Member of the Mahunga Golf Club.
The course remained open throughout all seasons. However, the course was closed from 28th June 1947 until 12th July 1947. The reason for this closure was that a flood of the
nearby Waipoua River damaged the suspension bridge giving access to the course, and also deposited logs and other debris on the course. The course was again closed in June 1953, when a flood on 11th June swept away the suspension bridge. The damage to the course was not as severe as the 1947 flood, and so the course was back in play much quicker.
1954 saw the Centennial of Masterton, and the Masterton Centennial Golf tournament was played at the Mahunga Golf course. On 11th February 1958, a fire destroyed the equipment shed on the course, destroying the pumping equipment. The club were unwilling to spend much effort in improving the course as it was onlyleasehold, and the effect of that was to see a decline in the membership. In early May 1959, the Committee set up a special sub-committee to investigate buying the course from the owner, Mr C. Burling, at a cost of £8000. Many discussions took place, and it appeared that the purchase was becoming more likely, when the owner suddenly withdrew the offer. The land was then sold to the Masterton Trotting Club, and then on-sold to Mr Haddon Donald. When the offer of the land was withdrawn, the Club began to look at alternative sites for a golf course, and in early 1964, the Club had located a promising property in Norfolk Road at the southern end of Masterton. But by then the land that the course was on was owned by Mr Donald, and an agreement to buy the land was soon formulated.
With the agreement being reached to buy the course, the committee began to proceed with work on improvements to the course, especially the upper part. May 1965 saw a decision made to install an irrigation system for the greens on the course. Much voluntary work from the members saw the system installed in time for the 1966 season. The purchase of the course was finally completed on 28th September 1965. Mr Donald also offered the Club a building that had originally been the Donald Homestead in the early years of the century. The building was situated some distance from the Clubhouse at that time, and a decision was made to move the building to the car park to become the new Clubhouse. The two story building of some 4000 square feet was moved to that site in a big project in July 1966. The building was constructed from heart Totara, Rimu and Kauri, and weighed in excess of 40 tons. This new Club House was to replace the original club house, which was much smaller in size, and was stied close to the creek that passes alongside the present ninth hole. With
the Club being very much a social as well as a golfing club, there were many stories of players leaving the old Club House after dark being rather wet when they reached their transport.
In addition to the Clubhouse, Mr Donald also a donated to the Club the land on which the Greenkeepers cottage stands.
On 3rd August 1967, another fire struck the Mahunga Golf Club. This time it was the tractor shed that was burnt down, and the greenkeeper, Mr H. Haywood was admitted to hospital with burns. The Masterton Golf Club came to the assistance of the club, with the loan of equipment until the committee was able to obtain replacements.The fire also destroyed some of the earlier records of the Mahunga Golf Club, which had been stored in the tractor shed.
At the meeting of the committee in April 1968, the decision was made to remove the sheep from the course. With that decision, and the associated decision to fence the course, the need for fences around the greens was removed.
On 15th March 1969, Mahunga wrote its name in the record books. The record was the world record for a round of golf. The time taken was 12 minutes and 50.7 seconds, a world
record and more than a minute faster than the previous record. It took 93 strokes to complete the round. The culmination of extensive work on the new Clubhouse was the official opening took place on 12th July 1969. The new Clubhouse offered great views of the course, and the Tararua ranges in the distance, and the amenities it provided were a great improvement on the previous Clubhouse.
On 22nd November 1969, Bob Charles played an exhibition round at Mahunga with New Zealand representative John Durry and two Mahunga members, Peter Hoar and Murray Macklin. The standard of golf was good, with Bob Charles lowering Peter Hoar's course record of 67 by one shot.
During 1971, the Club had a review of the way it was operating, and as a result of the review, the Constitution of the Club was changed. Up until this time, the person responsible for the smooth running of the Club was the Club Captain, with the President being a figurehead. As a result of the changes, The President became the officer of the Club in overall charge of running the Club, while the Club Captain took a more active interest in the running of the playing side of the Club. The first President to take up the changed roles was George Webb, who was also the last Club Captain to be the Chief Executive of the Club.
In 1982, the Club held a Golden Jubilee celebration, which was well attended by many former and current members. One of the highlights of the week-end was the hole in one scored by one of the organisers of the Jubilee, Nan Lawrence. During the course of 1983, Mr Donald once again donated land to the Club. This time it was several acres of land bordering the greenkeeper's cottage. The condition attached to this donation was that it was to be used as a practice fairway.
In 1987, the Club and Mr Donald arranged for a swapping of land, in which the Club gained the title to parts of the course that was being used, in exchange for the land where the
original clubhouse stood. This land was turned into a lake, which has added somewhat to the appearance of the course surrounds. In the middle 1980's, it became clear that, with an expanding membership, some parts of the Clubhouse were becoming too small. It was in 1988 that a Special General Meeting of the Club agreed to extend both floors of the Clubhouse by approximately two metres. As the Clubhouse was formerly a Homestead, the extensions were carefully planned to retain the special character of the existing Clubhouse.
In 1991, the Club made a decision to upgrade the irrigation system used by the Club. The driving force behind the decision to upgrade the system was the fact that the plastic piping was becoming very brittle with age, and the green-keeper was required to spend considerable amounts of time repairing the breakages. The new system replaced the one installed in the early 1960's, but was more extensive in its operation, in that it provided for the first time the facility to automatically irrigate the tees as well as the greens.Nature took to the course in the 1990’s, with two floods during November and December 1994 undermining the bank on which the eighteenth tee had been located, with the result that the tee disappeared into the river. A further flood in April 1995 saw a large piece of land that included the path from the old eighteenth tee and the pump shed and the drinking fountain all swept away into the river. The same flood caused some damage further down the course, where the river began eating away at part of the second fairway a short distance in front of the tee. As if those problems were not enough, strong gale force winds during August 1995 resulted in many trees being blown down, the majority of which were in the area of the seventeenth green. This clean-up was to be a major exercise and so it was decided that a number of other trees that had been targeted for future removal would be taken out at the same time and the entire lot was sold to the Timber
Work on Rules and a Constitution for the newly formed Club was carried out by Mr P. S. Page, and was adopted by the members at a meeting on 21st July 1931. At that meeting, Mr G. H. Perry was appointed President of the Club, and Mr P. S. Page was elected Club Captain. The meeting also decided that the new Club's colours would be black and gold. In addition, it was decided that lady members who were unable to play during the week for business reasons would be given full playing privileges at the week-end. The Club was initially restricted to seventy members.
On Saturday 10th August 1931, the nine hole Solway Golf Club was officially opened by the Mayor of Masterton, Mr T. Jordan. At the opening ceremony, the President, Mr G H Perry, stated his hope that the new Club would keep its fees low, as he felt that it was better to have people playing golf rather than looking on, while the Club Captain expressed his hope that the Club could expand to an 18 hole course as soon as possible. For the first year of operation, the subscriptions were set at the rate of 37/6, reducible to 30/- if paid within one month of election.
At the first Annual General Meeting of the Solway Golf Club, it was reported that the Club ended the first year with a credit balance of £24 8s 11p, and that there were no outstanding subscriptions. The membership of the Club had reached its initial limit of 70, and so the meeting raised the limit to 100 members.
On Tuesday 21st June 1932, the local golf professional, one E. W. Perry, played a round of what was termed moonlight golf with two members of the Club, G. Peterson and W.Ball. The latter player managed to use the same ball throughout the round, with the other players losing one ball each. The professional, E. W. Perry, finished with a round of 79, with Mr Peterson ending with a score of 85 and Mr Ball with an 87. During the 1932 season, the Solway Golf Club engaged in inter-club matches with the Eketahuna, Bideford, Riversdale and Greytown Golf Clubs, but the results of these matches do not appear to have been recorded. At the same time, two of the inaugural members and officials of the Club moved from the district, the Treasurer, a Mr E. Chisolm, and the Club Captain, Mr P. Page.
Co-operation with the other Clubs of the district was evident, and in 1934, the Club held a joint competition with the Riverside Golf Club over the Easter week-end, with the Saturday featuring a 35 hole medal round at the Solway Golf Club, and the Monday a Bogey competition at Riverside. Pressure on membership numbers resulted in the Annual General Meeting of the Solway Golf Club on 12th November 1934 increasing the allowable number of members by 50 mid-week members. The same meeting raised the question of acquiring new links on which it would be possible to lay out an 18 hole course. As a result, the Committee were empowered to proceed with further negotiations to achieve this end.
In early 1935, a Special General Meeting of the Club accepted the proposal to lease over 90 acres at Akura for the purpose of establishing a new 18 hole golf course. The area to be
leased was part of the Mahunga farm, and the Club resolved to change its name to the Mahunga Golf Club. The meeting also decided to increase the level of membership to 150,
which did not include the 50 mid-week members agreed to earlier. A great deal of work took place in the early part of the year on the new course, so that,when the Club had it's official opening on 13th April 1935, fourteen greens were already available for play, but only nine were used on the day. The new Clubhouse was not ready to be opened at the same time.
Saturday 13th July 1935 was the date that the Clubhouse was officially opened, and it was on the same day that the remaining four holes of the now eighteen hole course were
opened.
It was during the same year that the first two trophies for Inter club play involving the Mahunga Golf Club were presented. These Trophies were the Dominion Life InterClub Challenge Cup for the Men and the Rew and McCracken Cup for the Ladies. The Clubs involved in these challenge matches were Mahunga, Riverside and Bideford. On the playing front, another feature of the year was the first hole in one on the course by a member, Mr T. Hanley.
At the closing day function for the 1935 season, it was announced that the course would be kept in playing order throughout the summer. The membership of the Club was still growing at this stage, with the approved level of membership being increased to 200 ordinary, life and country members, and an additional 30 junior members. The ratio of Men to Lady members of the Club was left open for the Committee to decide. With the new course still in its infancy, it was decided to ask for outside assistance in laying out the greens. This assistance was sought from a prominent local golfer, Mr T. H. Horton, a member of the Masterton Golf Club, and Mr J. D. McIntosh from Wellington.
In the early part of 1937, the Mahunga Golf Club affiliated with the New Zealand Ladies Golf Union, and later that year the ladies formed their own committee to run their
matches. It was on 3rd April 1944 that Mr I I McGregor, Captain of the Club from 1936 until retiring in 1943, was elected the first Life Member of the Mahunga Golf Club.
The course remained open throughout all seasons. However, the course was closed from 28th June 1947 until 12th July 1947. The reason for this closure was that a flood of the
nearby Waipoua River damaged the suspension bridge giving access to the course, and also deposited logs and other debris on the course. The course was again closed in June 1953, when a flood on 11th June swept away the suspension bridge. The damage to the course was not as severe as the 1947 flood, and so the course was back in play much quicker.
1954 saw the Centennial of Masterton, and the Masterton Centennial Golf tournament was played at the Mahunga Golf course. On 11th February 1958, a fire destroyed the equipment shed on the course, destroying the pumping equipment. The club were unwilling to spend much effort in improving the course as it was onlyleasehold, and the effect of that was to see a decline in the membership. In early May 1959, the Committee set up a special sub-committee to investigate buying the course from the owner, Mr C. Burling, at a cost of £8000. Many discussions took place, and it appeared that the purchase was becoming more likely, when the owner suddenly withdrew the offer. The land was then sold to the Masterton Trotting Club, and then on-sold to Mr Haddon Donald. When the offer of the land was withdrawn, the Club began to look at alternative sites for a golf course, and in early 1964, the Club had located a promising property in Norfolk Road at the southern end of Masterton. But by then the land that the course was on was owned by Mr Donald, and an agreement to buy the land was soon formulated.
With the agreement being reached to buy the course, the committee began to proceed with work on improvements to the course, especially the upper part. May 1965 saw a decision made to install an irrigation system for the greens on the course. Much voluntary work from the members saw the system installed in time for the 1966 season. The purchase of the course was finally completed on 28th September 1965. Mr Donald also offered the Club a building that had originally been the Donald Homestead in the early years of the century. The building was situated some distance from the Clubhouse at that time, and a decision was made to move the building to the car park to become the new Clubhouse. The two story building of some 4000 square feet was moved to that site in a big project in July 1966. The building was constructed from heart Totara, Rimu and Kauri, and weighed in excess of 40 tons. This new Club House was to replace the original club house, which was much smaller in size, and was stied close to the creek that passes alongside the present ninth hole. With
the Club being very much a social as well as a golfing club, there were many stories of players leaving the old Club House after dark being rather wet when they reached their transport.
In addition to the Clubhouse, Mr Donald also a donated to the Club the land on which the Greenkeepers cottage stands.
On 3rd August 1967, another fire struck the Mahunga Golf Club. This time it was the tractor shed that was burnt down, and the greenkeeper, Mr H. Haywood was admitted to hospital with burns. The Masterton Golf Club came to the assistance of the club, with the loan of equipment until the committee was able to obtain replacements.The fire also destroyed some of the earlier records of the Mahunga Golf Club, which had been stored in the tractor shed.
At the meeting of the committee in April 1968, the decision was made to remove the sheep from the course. With that decision, and the associated decision to fence the course, the need for fences around the greens was removed.
On 15th March 1969, Mahunga wrote its name in the record books. The record was the world record for a round of golf. The time taken was 12 minutes and 50.7 seconds, a world
record and more than a minute faster than the previous record. It took 93 strokes to complete the round. The culmination of extensive work on the new Clubhouse was the official opening took place on 12th July 1969. The new Clubhouse offered great views of the course, and the Tararua ranges in the distance, and the amenities it provided were a great improvement on the previous Clubhouse.
On 22nd November 1969, Bob Charles played an exhibition round at Mahunga with New Zealand representative John Durry and two Mahunga members, Peter Hoar and Murray Macklin. The standard of golf was good, with Bob Charles lowering Peter Hoar's course record of 67 by one shot.
During 1971, the Club had a review of the way it was operating, and as a result of the review, the Constitution of the Club was changed. Up until this time, the person responsible for the smooth running of the Club was the Club Captain, with the President being a figurehead. As a result of the changes, The President became the officer of the Club in overall charge of running the Club, while the Club Captain took a more active interest in the running of the playing side of the Club. The first President to take up the changed roles was George Webb, who was also the last Club Captain to be the Chief Executive of the Club.
In 1982, the Club held a Golden Jubilee celebration, which was well attended by many former and current members. One of the highlights of the week-end was the hole in one scored by one of the organisers of the Jubilee, Nan Lawrence. During the course of 1983, Mr Donald once again donated land to the Club. This time it was several acres of land bordering the greenkeeper's cottage. The condition attached to this donation was that it was to be used as a practice fairway.
In 1987, the Club and Mr Donald arranged for a swapping of land, in which the Club gained the title to parts of the course that was being used, in exchange for the land where the
original clubhouse stood. This land was turned into a lake, which has added somewhat to the appearance of the course surrounds. In the middle 1980's, it became clear that, with an expanding membership, some parts of the Clubhouse were becoming too small. It was in 1988 that a Special General Meeting of the Club agreed to extend both floors of the Clubhouse by approximately two metres. As the Clubhouse was formerly a Homestead, the extensions were carefully planned to retain the special character of the existing Clubhouse.
In 1991, the Club made a decision to upgrade the irrigation system used by the Club. The driving force behind the decision to upgrade the system was the fact that the plastic piping was becoming very brittle with age, and the green-keeper was required to spend considerable amounts of time repairing the breakages. The new system replaced the one installed in the early 1960's, but was more extensive in its operation, in that it provided for the first time the facility to automatically irrigate the tees as well as the greens.Nature took to the course in the 1990’s, with two floods during November and December 1994 undermining the bank on which the eighteenth tee had been located, with the result that the tee disappeared into the river. A further flood in April 1995 saw a large piece of land that included the path from the old eighteenth tee and the pump shed and the drinking fountain all swept away into the river. The same flood caused some damage further down the course, where the river began eating away at part of the second fairway a short distance in front of the tee. As if those problems were not enough, strong gale force winds during August 1995 resulted in many trees being blown down, the majority of which were in the area of the seventeenth green. This clean-up was to be a major exercise and so it was decided that a number of other trees that had been targeted for future removal would be taken out at the same time and the entire lot was sold to the Timber