"Warnie could play shots that I've seen very few people play under pressure. What he could do with the cricket ball I saw him do with the golf club and the golf ball ... it used to burn Ricky's arse"

Greg Chappell on golf and some classic Warne v Punter moments

If you have nothing to do on March 28 you should come and join Greg Chappell, Damien Fleming, David Warner and others on the exclusive confines of Melbourne’s Capital Golf Club.

What a place that is to visit.

Greg says in all his years playing there he only ever saw one other person beside his group on the private course. I’ve heard it said that there were years where an average of four people a day played the course.

The March 28 event with the cricketers is to raise money for The Chappell Foundation and follows a highly entertaining day at the venue last year.

Capital was the private playground of Kerry Packer and his mate Lloyd Williams after the media mogul bought the place back in 2000. Ostensibly it was for high rollers at the casino. In reality it was a private playground for them and a few select mates. To this day, Kerry’s golf gear is still in a locker which has become something of a shrine for anyone visiting. The billionaire’s trousers, shirt, cap, RM Williams boots, sunglasses and spare socks are in situ alongside a fascinating range of toiletries.

Kerry Packer’s locker at The Capital Golf Club

Who knew that Kerry used Old Spice deodorant, or that he and I shared a fondness for the elusive Vaseline Hair Tonic? The comb, hair brush, Listerine and Johnson’s Baby Powder suggest a man who was attentive, but surprisingly grounded when it came to grooming. No golden dunnies or Aesop scents for big Kerry.

This week I’ve been talking with Greg, David and Flem about the intersection of golf and cricket and it proved to be fascinating.

Although Greg’s stories about how Warne would outfox Ponting when they played against each other were fascinating, his insights into the mental sides of the game were next level.

“Cricketers, and not just the batsman, but particularly the batsman who decide they want to be good golfers usually are because the mental side of the game is so similar,” Chappell said. “It suits us, those of us that have the mentality to play cricket, it’s more the slow burn mentality and golf is a slow burn.

“If you get angry, guess what, you play more shit.

“That is the beauty of it, golf is the perfect example of what you think about is what you get and I am serious when I say – and I’ve said this to many young cricketers but I’ve said it to many golfers too _ is that your subconscious is a better player than you will ever be because it knows what to do. You’ve got to give it clear instructions and then get out of the way.”

More on that, later.

Warner, whose main job off the field was organising golf days for his teammates, says it is the perfect game for cricketers as it is one of the few that allows you to get miles in your legs without exhausting yourself. Fleming was late to it, but notes that he keeps in touch with all his cricket mates by arranging golf days with them every time they are in the same town. In Brisbane it’s AB, Sydney’s BJ, Adelaide’s Blewie, Perth its Alderman, Hughes and Langer.

What else you going to do, catch up in the pub?

Back in Greg’s day, Rod Marsh led the golf charge, but Ian Chappell and Doug Walters were keen too. Gideon reminds me that the cricketers were acutely aware that Rod’s brother Graham made multiples of what they did despite being a middling golfer and this apparent injustice was part of what drove them to join Packer’s World Series Cricket. In 1975 the cricketer, who had a full time job, earned $12,000 while his golfing brother earned $US120,354 (source, The Cricket War by Gideon Haigh)

The current Australian team, who do not have to work thanks to the agitations of their forebears, are among the more committed golfers you will encounter - there’s almost a golf bag for every cricket kit packed in the team van. Coach Andrew McDonald is sympathetic and apparently a very good golfer himself. Glenn Maxwell is very good and Jake Fraser-McGurk is possibly better. Warner loves it, Steve Smith has recently taken it up - and possibly found another purpose in life. Word is Victorian spinner Jon Holland is the best of the lot.

Ponting and Greg Blewett - who played as an amateur when he retired from cricket - are the stars of their era. The former Australian skipper played in the New Zealand pro-am last week and hit some remarkable shots which you can watch here and here.

Warne played off a what’s been described as a “comfortable” handicap and was as cunning as a fox, which should surprise nobody. Chappell says that watching the leg spinner compete with Ponting was a revelation and the best part of it was “the match within the match”.

“Punter is an extraordinarily good golfer, and I enjoyed playing with and against him,” he said. “Warney and I used to play against Punter and David Evans in the Cathedral Cup every year and Punter had to give Warnie maybe as many as eight shots, and he couldn't give him eight shots. Warnie was a much better player than that. I mean, Warney, with all due respect, probably had a little bit of a cushion in his handicap.

“And, he could play shots. Warnie could play shots that I've seen very few people play under pressure. What he could do with the cricket ball I saw him do with the golf club and the golf ball. He willed himself to play a good shot. He willed the ball into the hole and he could putt and it used to burn Ricky's arse. He couldn't beat him because he ended he got crankier and crankier the further the round went, because he had to have a birdie to even a hole with him.

“I wasn't totally unemotional in that I was involved in the match. It was Warnie’s and my team versus Punter and David Evans. So yeah, I had an investment in the match, but I was sort of the observer of the game within the game, the game between Punter and Warnie, and Warnie just loved beating him. Warnie loved needling him. And Punter didn't say much, but it was difficult to talk with the amount of steam that was coming out of his ears. It just made me chuckle, just watching the two of them at play was brilliant.

“And to be sitting in the cart alongside Warnie, hearing his strategy, about how he was going to play this hole and he was going to make it impossible for Punter to beat him. He wanted to win, but he just wanted to strategically play the hole in a way that he couldn't lose it. Punter just couldn't beat him. Particularly it was a hole that was perhaps a bit long for him, or had a really dangerous second shot. He would play it in a way that would take the danger out of it, so that he would have a bogey, knowing that the chances of Punter having a birdie to win that hole was probably less than 5% so he knew the odds better than anyone else.”

Which, naturally, leads to a story about Warne playing cards.

Greg Chappell tells the 2024 Golf Day group to let their subconscious take over.

“I remember asking him about his card playing and how he got into cards. And apparently, you know, they had cards when they were kids, there were cards always around the place, and so he got into it, and he loved numbers, and he loved sort of strategy and all that sort of stuff.

“I asked him, well, how do you go about playing cards? What are your strategies for that? He said, ‘well, if I'm playing in a group that I don't know, I will play like a novice and make sure I lose the first few hands. I'll never lose a lot, but I'll make them think that I don't really know what I'm doing, and then I'll clean up. He will take that first two or three hands to work out who's who, and which of the blokes in the group or the women in the group can play, and just rip the arse right out of the rest of them. And that's what he used to do on the golf course.”

Watching Chappell, who got his handicap down to one, but is now playing at around six, play golf is fascinating. He still has what he calls that “guardsman bearing”, that straight back and effortless swing that was so reminiscent of seeing him with bat, not club, in hand.

This is the second time Warner has given up his time to join the Chappell Foundation’s golf day and the second time his St Andrews Beach Brewery has donated the beer for the event. Levantine Hill are supplying the wine.

When David grew up in Matraville the family had one golf club and it was for right-handers and to this day he plays right-handed.

“When you're on the road, you got so much time that passes by, so yeah, a lot of the guys obviously opt to play golf. It is the best preparation for Test cricket.

“It's time on your feet, isn't it? So it's, there's no other thing you can replicate being on your feet for four or five hours in the field, and you're walking 10 to 12kms as well.”

Warner plays at the New South Wales Golf Club and says he’s playing off a handicap of 3.6 at the moment.

“I didn’t play a lot early in my career, but took it up a bit more seriously when Ivy was born,” he said. “The boys don’t practice much, we just go out and play, so you can imagine how good some of them would be if they did. I’ve played a few rounds with Greg Blewett and a few with Punter, but the thing with Punter is that he actually gets out there and practices, he goes to the driving range and everything. That’s why he’s very good, but he’s talented in most sports.”

Ponting was also born into golf. His mother and father were so committed they wouldn’t come to Test matches to see him play as it clashed with their golf commitments. Graham and Lorraine were obsessed with the game. I recall visiting the family home some decades back and having to tip-toe through a carpet of golf balls.

When Ricky moved house a few years back his father-in-law is said to have made three trips in his ute just to move the golf clubs. There may even be a storage container involved. There would be golf shops with less kit than Punter.

Fleming, who is one of the funnier people you will meet, says he hated the game as a young man but was forced to take it up when Allan Border pointed out that he was making so much money from corporate golf days (like everybody and everything to do with the Chappell Foundation Damien donates his time to our fundraising) but getting around like the worst weekend hack.

“I hated it growing up, I couldn't think of a worse way to spend four and a half - five hours. At school, it was the game the unsporty kids played. When I started first-class cricket, everyone apart from the Australian players still had a job, so golf wasn't part of the thing. As a result, I don't have a lot of Victorian golf mates. And then, even when I was playing for Australia I only played when they made me play at corporate days and I hated it.

“Then, I was playing up at Royal Queensland, I’d obviously got into public speaking and keynoting once we retired. And then, so you get invited to a lot of golf days. But I remember this day, I'm hitting them left and right, I'm playing with the GM and the CEO, and I'm thinking, do they really want to hear me tell stories after they've been searching for my lost balls for five hours?

“And then I remember AB, the lovely man, said ‘mate, it's an absolute disgrace that you are getting paid so much for playing golf at these corporate days and you can't play, and these young amateurs are out there trying to make it. It's a bloody disgrace, which was an interesting perspective because he was right - I was getting paid to play golf and it was embarrassing.

“These captains of industry want to play Ponting and Blewett no with someone as bad as me. So I thought I've got to get half competent here, because I can't afford for that to happen again. And then, obviously, once you once you get into it, you get the bug. You know what I mean, like, pretty quickly.”

Fleming jokes that he had turned pro with a handicap of 32, but he started to play a lot more at The Australian Golf Club with Border and Brendon Julian before joining a club in Melbourne when he was 40.

“So now I love it.”

Fleming got his handicap down to as low as four but says it moves out a bit in the summer months when he can’t play as much, but come winter you can’t get him off the course.

Chappell is interesting on the addiction to golf and the elements necessary to become a better player.

“I played games of golf as a youngster growing up, but I was never a golfer. I did it because someone else was doing it, and joined in, but I was no no good at it. And I actively avoided playing golf most of my cricket career because I just didn't see the point - unlike Davey - of being on the legs on a rest day. I mean, we're on our legs all the time. I needed a rest on a rest day. I didn't have the stamina of Ian or Rod or Doug Walters who could just go and play golf on the rest days and then stay in the bar for another five hours talking about it. It just didn't it didn't grab me.

“It was only when I was coming to the end of my cricket career that I Well, what do I do next? I mean, I want to play sport. I love baseball, and I really seriously contemplated playing baseball again after cricket. But then the trouble with the team sport is that you know, if there's training, you've got to be there. You didn't really have control of your life in that regard. So I thought, well, tennis doesn't grab me. I'll give golf for go. At least with golf. I want to practice. I can. If I don't want to practice, I don't have to. I sort of understood that the flow, the mental flow, of golf, was very similar to cricket, and therefore the lessons that I had learned playing cricket would stand me in good stead from a mental point of view. And so I started playing golf, and sadly, like everyone else, I thought I needed someone to teach me how to play it. And I had a few lessons and realized that most of the guys didn't know more about it than I did, and probably what I had, what I was always going to have, I mean, what I had to get better at was producing the good shots more often.

“And so I went through the drug addict stage. Golf isn't a sport, it's a bloody drug. It hooks. And I found myself in those early days that when I started playing golf, sort of right at the end of my cricket career, that if I was at work or been out of an appointment or something, and I didn't have anything necessarily in the office for a little while, my car would just take me to the practice range. I couldn't stop it. Just kept taking me there and hitting balls and hitting balls. And then again, I had an epiphany on the practice range one day that actually, I'm not getting any better at this, because the tendency is that try this, try that, try something else, and by the end of the session, you can't remember what you did at the start of it, and so you know all you were doing was confusing yourself.

“Much like cricket, I think the training of golf and the training of cricket takes you into your conscious mind, where you think about what you're doing, and that is a surefire disaster. What you really have to do is give your subconscious mind really clear instructions and then get out of the way, because your subconscious mind is a better golfer than you will ever be.“

The Chappell Foundation is run by volunteers and has distributed over $5m to help alleviate youth homelessness in Australia. It passes on around 99 cents in ever dollar it raises.

If you want to play on March 28 and help this worthy cause here’s a link for registration.

Full disclosure: I’m a voluntary director of the Chappell Foundation and will be in attendance to ensure things run smoothly - I don’t play golf.