Richard Ellis driving Tieke Golf Estate

By Neville Idour

 

It was very rewarding to catch up with Richard Ellis who is the director of golf at the outstanding Tieke Golf Estate near Cambridge and Hamilton. 

This new unique inland links course is turning heads in every way. It was good to chat about Ellis' life in golf and to experience this new and exciting course.

Ellis, who is one of the most respected persons in Australasian golf, served as president of the New Zealand Professional Golfers’ Association (NZPGA) for 10 years and was a director of the PGA Tour of Australasia for 15 years. 

He was awarded golf’s International Goodwill Ambassador trophy by the International Golf Association in 1998. In addition, he was awarded life membership of the NZPGA for services to golf and is an honorary life member of the PGA of Australia. Ellis who has an impressive record of managing courses from their beginnings is relishing his role at Tieke.

So where did it all begin? An Australian, born in Brisbane, he first played golf as a 12-year-old at Caboolture Golf course on the Sunshine Coast, which is also where Ian Baker-Finch, Peter Senior  and others started playing.

Ellis explains: “I didn’t play a lot of golf at that stage as I played cricket. Then we moved to Sydney when I was about 15. I have a brother and sister. My sister Bronwyn is married to Art Russell a US professional who used to come to New Zealand when the Nationwide Tour was here and she would caddy for him. In fact she was the first woman to caddy at the men’s US Open. She was also the head teaching professional at a country club in Colorado.

“I went to Pennant Hills High School (in Sydney) and was doing a lot of competitive swimming and I trained with Shane Gould. We were in the same training squad and would train at 5am five days a week for 90 minutes. Shane of course went on to win three gold and two silver medals at the Olympic Games. Swimming in the final of the 100 metres for New South Wales at the Australian Championships was as good as I got.”

Then it was time to start playing competitive golf at Parklea Golf Club in Sydney and by the time Ellis was 16 he was on a one handicap. 

“Then I did my golf apprenticeship starting in Sydney and then I moved to Brisbane and Redcliff Golf Club where I worked with Dennis Brosnan. Back in those days I grew up with Greg Norman, Ian Baker-Finch, Peter Senior and Wayne Grady who was a junior member there. Wayne and I would play golf almost every other day and he went on to win the US PGA Championship.”

So did you know Greg Norman?

 “Yes, I knew him well. In his younger days he was a surfer and was a storeman and packer at PGF Golf in Brisbane. So we would ring him and order clubs which he would pack and send to us. He was member at Royal Queensland so we would play golf together there. I played a lot of junior golf and won the Captain Cook Bi Centenary Australian Junior Championship in 1970 in Sydney. I also played for the New South Wales schoolboys' team against the interstate teams.''

Legendary Australian names such as Rodger Davis, Bob Shearer, Stuart Ginn, Ian Baker-Finch, Ian Stanley and Peter Senior were players Ellis was competing with or against.

“I turned professional at 18 years of age when I finished my apprenticeship at Redcliff and played some tournaments in Australia for a couple of years. On the main tour, New Zealand actually had more order of merit tournaments than Australia. 

``Those were the days when guys like Seve Ballesteros, when he was 2, and good mate John Lister and others would play at St Clair (in Dunedin). There was the Otago Charity Classic and the Garden City Classic at Russley.

“I remember Tom Watson played there in 1977, I think. So there was a whole stack of us that moved and lived in Auckland, guys like Wayne MacIntosh and Geoff Smart. So I ended up staying in New Zealand and played a lot of pro-ams here. I used to play the Asian Tour quite a bit in those days and up through the Pacific Islands and Hawaii. I did that for about 15 years.” 

During that time he won about 15 tournaments, mainly pro-ams, two in Fiji, in American Samoa, in Australia and several in New Zealand.

“In 1983 I was involved with golf courses and setting things up. I set up the first driving range in Auckland at Panmure and within 12 months the associated golf shop became New Zealand’s largest retailer of golf equipment. I was 28 when I left there and went to Tahiti for a year and helped set up golf and teaching golf.”

“I came back and set up a golf shop in the middle of Auckland in High Street called Golf City. Then in 1986 a partner and I had the lease to run Auckland’s busiest public golf course at Takapuna on the North Shore. We redeveloped it for the council and took a 30-year lease on it. We built the new clubhouse and driving range and redesigned the course. I was there for about seven years then we sold to some Koreans.”

In 1990 Ellis formed his Pacific Golf Management company while at Takapuna. This company does all his golf tours, pro-ams  and overseas tours to Fiji , Asia, Australia, the South Pacific islands and Hawaii as well as events in New Zealand. Alongside this he was also instrumental in setting up the South Pacific Professional Golf Circuit with tournaments in Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti, Raratonga, New Caledonia and Vanuatu. 

“We still do two big events in Fiji, the Sheraton Golf Classic and the Fiji Legends which is part of the Australian PGA Tour.

“At that stage Gulf Harbour Country Club was being built. The Singaporean owner Mr Goh, who had huge freight and shipping companies, approached me. He had a 55-metre boat called White Rabbit parked at Gulf Harbour. It was like a mini ocean liner. So I agreed to set Gulf Harbour up and it opened in 1997. In reality this was New Zealand’s first true international golf resort. Then in 1998 we had the World Cup of Golf there. We did the organisation for what was the largest prizemoney event ever held in Australasia with $3 million. “

This writer well remembers the many big names at the exciting new course. Sir Nick Faldo, John Daly who made an inglorious early exit, Colin Montgomerie, Padraig Harrington, Angel Cabrera and our own Frank Nobilo and Greg Turner were amongst the drawcards.

“I was originally on a two-year contract at Gulf Harbour but they asked me to stay and I ended up there for seven years until they sold it. At this point the guys who were building The Lakes Resort (near Pauanui) approached me so I went there to help them set it up in 2005.” Lakes Resort is an exclusive gated residential community around the International golf course.

“That was when my twins Michael and Sarah were born. They are now 17. My wife Cushla had worked at Gulf Harbour with me and we were married in 1999. But the last few years we have been concentrating more on the golf tours which was huge for us while we were living in Pauanui, rather than working on golf courses.”

“Then the opportunity at Tieke came up. Phil Tataurangi rang me and asked me to come and have a look at the project. I did and said I liked it. They said they were looking for someone to run the golf operations so here I am.”

We asked if it took much thought to make the move?

“The children were at high school and it involved a lot of travelling. Sarah had won a scholarship in Auckland and was boarding while Michael was spending two hours on the bus each day for his schooling. Being their last year at school it made sense to make the move and we now live in Cambridge.”

So when did you start at Tieke?

“I arrived here in October 2021 and the course opened in December. When I arrived the course was still being finished and the clubhouse was in the throes of foundations being laid.

So how would you describe your feelings about your current situation?

“We are really happy here. We have 1000 members with a waiting list. We have many of the best Waikato juniors here and we have Reon Sayer who used to work for me at Lakes Resort also working here running our golf academy. The academy part is currently being built and he is booked out two weeks in advance with lessons. He coaches Denzel Ieremia and a lot of the country’s top juniors.” 

He has also previously been a head coach for many years at St Peters Golf Academy in Cambridge and for a year at the New Zealand Golf Academy in China.

Annual subscriptions are a very reasonable $1750 with a number of foundation members enjoying a significant discount that will continue with their membership. The club also offers a very attractive corporate golf cart package for $5000. For that you get two memberships and signage on a golf cart. This has proven very popular with many takers.

Ellis continues: “The golf course is fantastic. Phil Tataurangi has done a great job. The fairways are quite generous. It is quite unique in that the wasteland and all the sand on the course is actually built on a riverbed. When they took out all the 800 trees, mostly rubbishy pine trees, they found all the sand and decided to use it as a feature. None of it is classed as a bunker. We have 11 greenkeepers looking after the course.”

The magnificent, spacious state of the art clubhouse was designed by a member, Adam Taylor and Ellis feels there is nothing like it in New Zealand. As for tournaments Ellis would like to see a little more growing in of the South Island fescue-type grass which is slow growing before he feels it will be ready for the bigger tournaments he hopes to run. The first will be the Brian Perry Classic in September with the first round at St Andrews and the second round at Tieke. Jennian Homes, one of Tieke’s sponsors, is intending to run its Charles Tour end of year championship at Tieke each year.

The time spent with Ellis confirmed his standing as the consummate professional in every way. His talents have been utilised in almost every sphere of golf. His tours and tournaments are always top class and his involvement in golf operations, management, setting up resort golf courses and consultancy are without peer in New Zealand.

From this writer’s experience it is easy to see why Richard Ellis seems to have found his happy place currently. The day we were there his wife Cushla was happily working in the golf shop to complete the ideal scenario.