Golf legend Peter Thomson dies at 88 after battle with Parkinsons

Peter Thomson lived over 50 years of his life with the addendum five-times British Open champion.

His life was much more, but it was his signature.

Thomson dominated the tournament that is the unofficial world championship of the game between 1952 and 1965 on the seaside links of Scotland and England.

In that period, he won the title five times (1954-5-6-8-65), and was second three times. From 1954 to 1956 he won three times in a row, a feat managed by only a handful of players.

It makes him arguably Australias greatest golfer. Some say Greg Norman holds this mantle, but Norman only won two major championships — he either imploded or was dreadfully unlucky in at least three others — to Thomsons five.

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Asked about this once, Thomson said that neither he nor Norman owned the sobriquet; that it belonged to Karrie Webb, winner of seven major titles on the womens tour. This was typical of Thomson, who had the self-belief common to all great sports people, but who also knew his limitations. His confidence was not overt, and he carried a dignity all of his own.

Thomson, who has battled Parkinsons disease for the past four years, died this morning at home in Melbourne.

Born in West Brunswick, his first golf was played at Royal Park public course. At 12, he was given a
two iron as a gift, and by the time he was 16, he was champion of Royal Park and his pathway had
been laid out.

In fact, he studied at Victoria University (the old Footscray Tech) and RMIT, extracting a degree in chemistry, but his passion was geology. He was fascinated by soils and rock, and this would be useful many years later when his company would build golf courses in far-flung parts of the world.

I dont work hard, he said in 2009. Its brain work, really. Ive never done manual work. Golfs always been a sport, a game, a recreation, leisure for me.

Thomson turned professional in 1947, setting himself up at Victoria Golf Club in the famed sandbelt. He won tournaments everywhere, securing the national championships of 10 different countries, including his own.

Norman Von Nida, the great Australian professional, said of him: I sensed he had that inevitable something when I first set eyes on him.

Besides his personal glory, he twice won the Canada Cup, effectively the teams world championship of golf, for Australia with his great friend Kel Nagle.

He played with a glorious simplicity, and despised the modern tendency to over-analyse the beautiful game. I was content with my own company. I liked to figure things out for myself. Looking back, nobody taught me but countless people encouraged me. I think building up the ego of a young man is very important. But making golf a science and insisting that people study it, they get the feeling this is difficult. Whereas really, they should consider it easy because it is. Its just whacking a ball, for goodness sakes.

When he won the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale in 1954 it was worth £750, or enough to buy a decent house. When he won it for the fifth time at the same venue in 1965 it was on television, and worth £2000.

These were different times. Thomson had to borrow a jacket for the presentation when he won at Royal Liverpool in 1956, with ramifications. I thought I must get a jacket from somewhere and I saw Max Shaw, who was captain of Royal Melbourne at the time. I said do me a favour, lend me your coat. He took off his grey jacket and it fitted me.

The picture shows me in my white golf shoes with a strange jacket on taking the prize. When Max got back to Australia and his wife was sending his jacket to the dry cleaners, she found a cheque for £1000 in the pocket.

Thomson went to play in the United States, and won a tournament in Texas, but did not stay for long. He preferred the rolling links courses of Scotland — in particular the home of golf, St Andrews — and said that the fabled Augusta National, for instance, was too long for his game. The US tour wanted golfers to commit to it exclusively, and in any case, setting up in America was not the routine for Australian golfers in those days.

As though to thumb his nose at people who said he was no good in the US, he went there in 1985 to play the senior tour, and won an astonishing nine tournaments.

It was said that his domination of the British Open resulted from the lack of great American players coming across the Atlantic at the time, but the truth is that he was probably better than the Americans on links courses through that period.

Certainly, when he won the Open in 1965 at Royal Birkdale, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player were in his wake. It was his greatest triumph.

Thomson was married twice, to Lois, and later Mary, and had four children — Deidre Baker, Andrew
Thomson, Pan (Peta-Ann) Predergast and Fiona Stanway, along with 11 grandchildren and four great grandchildren. His son Andrew, a lawyer, was a member of Federal Parliament from 1995 to 2001, and a minister in John Howards government.

Thomson enjoyed opera, books and painting, and loved writing. For 30 years he penned columns for
The Age on golf with a distinct style and a sharp focus. Politically conservative, he was moved by his
early meetings with Prime Minister Robert Menzies, whom he described as an idol of mine, and
who loved his golf. Thomson stood for election to State Parliament in the seat of Prahran in 1982 but was unsuccessful as John Cain swept Labour to power.

Always a big influence on the golf industry, he was president of the Australian PGA from 1962 to 1994. When he stopped playing for a living, golf courses became his passion, and his company designed and reshaped facilities in Australia, Asia, Europe and the Middle East bearing his imprimatur. He captained the International team at the Presidents Cup several times and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1988, one of only a handful of Australians to receive the honour.

Until late in life, he continued to knock a golf ball around the various clubs of which he was a member (from St Andrews to Royal Melbourne to Portsea), for he was welcome on a golf course anywhere in the world. It [golf] reached out and grabbed me. I followed it faithfully. It was a good excuse for not working, he said.

Martin Blake is a Sports production journalist and writer for The Age.

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