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01 January 2010 - Welcome
06 February 2012 - Hjorth Pips Tocker for Summer Cup
31 January 2012 - Summer Cup poised for a real shootout.
17 December 2011 - New Life Member: Merv Caie
16 December 2011 - New Life Member: Jim Dunn
14 November 2011 - Jill Morgan, Champion of Champions

Welcome

Hello and welcome to the Pirongia Golf Club website. I hope that its contents are of value, whether you intend being a casual visitor or a potential club member.

Most clubs have a characteristic or two which sets them apart from other clubs and Pirongia is no exception. An obvious feature is the background setting of Mount Pirongia with its tidy, pastured,lower slopes, contrasting against the bush clad upper reaches. The close proximity to the bush provides, particularly during the spring months, an abundance of tui, as well as smaller numbers of kaka (NZ native parrot) and kereru, our native pigeon. Additional to this, the Waipa River and its tributary, the Mangapiko Stream, enhance the view from parts of the course.

Making the Pirongia Golf Club unique is the race track, integrated into the course, which is used once a year for the well known Pirongia Boxing Day races. The transformation of the golf course to a race track, with attendances of up to 10,000 people, and then back to a golf course, with just over one days play unavailable, bears testimony to another invaluable characteristic of Pirongia ... a great spirit of co-operation and voluntary help. It is this which also enables the golf club to keep the course in a neat and tidy condition, whilst maintaining very low costs of membership.

Should your visit coincide with our club day and our usual tee-off times, please make yourself known to the starting official who will arrange a playing group for you. Your presence is most welcome and I wish you an enjoyable round.

Thank you for visiting our website.

Hjorth Pips Tocker for Summer Cup

In an exciting finish to the first competition of the year, Jack Hjorth has pipped Graeme Tocker for the Summer Cup by countback. Both players finished the rain shortened event with a combined total of 123 Stableford points. However, Hjorth prevailed with his final round 42 point total while Tocker could only manage 40. Gus MacIntyre finished in third with 119 points.

Bill Crombie shot the low gross of the day on Sunday with a well compiled 75. His 42 point haul was enough to beat Hjorth in a countback for the scramble.

The Junior Scramble was won by Lyn Jury, also with 42 points, from Tockers 40 points.

John Creek struck the Junior Jackpot with a brace of two’s. This is the first time it has been struck for a considerable time.

Summer Cup poised for a real shootout.

Graeme Tocker has continued his fine form of the summer taking a comfortable lead after the second round of the summer cup. The first round was washed out. His 84 Gross, 46 points gave him a comfortable 4 shot lead over Derek Boyle. Murray Barclay was a further 2 points back.

However, as we commonly see, a great round can be hard to back up. After the third round, Tocker has had his lead halved after he could only muster 37 points. Barclay backed up his first round 40 with 41 to move up a place into second. Boyle dropped 4 spots with 36 points. The big movers were Adrian Elliott, Jack Hjorth (44) and Gus MacIntyre (43) to move into joint second with Barclay.

The 4th and final round takes place on Sunday 5th February.

New Life Members: Merv Caie

We have the pleasure of presenting the club history of Merv Caie who joined the club many years ago. He took a break for a while to raise his family, and then returned as a member to eventually make a huge contribution to the club.

Merv became a member of the match committee in 1999. After 5 years there he became a very good club captain in 2004, spending 3 years in that role. In his first year, he selected a winning Prebble Cup team. In his last year as club Captain he also became Vice president, and having recently retired, was grabbed for the works committee, remaining there ever since. In 2007 he became President, and fully devoted himself to that position for four years.

In addition, he has been chairman of the twilight committee for about seven years, and also saw the need to sit and obtain his bar licence for the benefit of the club.

During his time as President, several major projects were undertaken. One that has proved to be of huge benefit was the moving of the Pirongia Fire Force building, to become a new green keepers shed. Then the main entrance was mostly demolished to be widened, relevelled, fenced, resealed, and a security gate installed. With the gate project, he decided to save the club money by doing most of the preparation work himself, which eventually cost him a lot of time and major headaches. Until recently, he was the only one able to understand the timing mechanism.

Renewing the stairs up to the lounge was another project. How quickly we forget the great improvement created by that work.

All these projects require a lot of preparation time, especially researching the best deals for the club. His practical skills and ability were turned to extremely good use many times for the club, and his “fix it properly” attitude has also been of enormous benefit.

During most of his time as President, Merv had a continual battle with his health, but at no stage was it allowed to affect his work in running the club, or attending the regular solid days of work on the course.

For those of us who have worked closely with him, we have always admired him for his integrity, generosity, energy, and ability to deal with things immediately, and never stepping back from what needed to done.

It is my pleasure to move on behalf of the members, that Merv Caie become a life member of the Pirongia Golf Club.

New Life Members: Jim Dunn

Jim Dunn joined the club in 1994 and right from the beginning became involved in all aspects of manual work required to keep the course and surrounds spic and span. He has spent many, many hours spraying, cleaning under trees, planting and doing maintenance inside and outside the club house. He always seems to have a paint brush in his hand.

As a member of the house committee, Jim is behind the bar on most club and extra calendared days. On tournament days he's proved himself a dab hand at extracting money at the haggle hole to help with expenses.

A man who has never wanted the position of executive office but is always there to help in so many ways.

It gives us great pleasure to nominate Jim Dunn for life membership.

Congratulations Jim!

Jill Morgan - Champion of the Champions

Yet again Jill Morgan has put Pirongia Golf Club on the map when winning the Waikato Champion of Champions at Putaruru by three shots from Lochiel’s Hanna Seifert. Her afternoon round of 74 was the equal best score of the day, and when added to her earlier 77, left the opposition in tatters.

Brenda Staples performed creditably in the Bronze Championship, finishing mid field with rounds of 95 and 101.

Denise Goile made up the team competing for the Gross Stableford Rosebowl, adding 25 gross stablefords to Staple’s 27 and Morgan’s 65 giving them a team total of 117 which was good enough for third place and only 5 points behind the winner, Matamata.

Jill Morgan has recently returned from representing Waikato at the Women’s Masters at Shandon in Wellington where she was the best Waikato player and the 5th best overall. Waikato finished third behind Southland and Hawkes Bay.