AFTER many years of involvement at Portland Golf Club, Clint Foster remains as passionate as ever about his sport and his club.

Foster’s involvement in the sport has been extensive within his own club, he is a former president, captain and membership director and has been on the board for a number of years, while also representing the club as division one pennant captain and being crowned Club Champion at both Portland and Heywood.

In his pursuits beyond the town itself, Foster has also been the Western District Golf Association Champion and represented the association many times at country week, while also representing the Victorian Country team in their bi-annual match against South Australia Country.

Foster took up playing golf when he was still in primary school, and ever since then he said he’s been hooked on the game.

“As with any sport, if you start playing it from a young age you can often pick up the skills subconsciously,” he said.

“I was fortunate in that when I was getting started in the 80s, Greg Norman was pretty big, so back in the day a lot of kids were playing golf.

“I went to school in Hamilton and travelled here to play golf, and I never really played the other organised sports like footy or cricket.

“Not that I was unbelievably good or anything but when you’re passionate about a sport you try to get as good as you can, and with the handicap system there was always that goal of trying to get better.

“I was one of the younger ones in the group I used to play golf with, so in that sense as well I was always being challenged to get better.

“In any sport if you want to get better you have to be around people who are better at it.”

After graduating high school Foster took a break from the sport as he moved away for university, before travelling across to the mines in Western Australia.

“I didn’t really play golf in Melbourne because it was simply too expensive for a uni student, and when I was in Perth, I didn’t bring my golf ‘sticks’ with me,” he said.

“So, I probably had five or so years away from it, and I came back into it when I moved back to town at 23 or so to become a teacher at Bayview College.

“It probably helped my enthusiasm for the sport to be honest, when I look at the people around me who played right the way through, I think they lost a bit of enthusiasm for it whereas I never really have.

“When I was coming through there were probably half a dozen people who were as good as I was, but for one reason or another they dropped off over time.

“I still enjoy the challenge of trying to get better as time goes on, but nowadays one of the other things I really enjoy is the mateship which comes along with it.

“The great thing about golf is there’s no real end point to your career, if you play football, you know you’ve got a certain number of years, perhaps if you play cricket, you’ve got a while longer.

“But if you play golf you can compete from when you’re 12 until you’re 82, there’s guys here at the club who are in their 80s and still playing really good golf.”

While Foster always wanted to play the sport at the highest level, he said his realisation that he wasn’t quite at the level of professional golf when he did work experience at 16 at Warrnambool Golf Club.

“Everyone who doesn’t make it has that moment of realisation I suppose and seeing the standard of golf being played by the pros was mine,” he said.

“In saying that, potential can be pretty tough to pick, and I’ve certainly come across players who I thought were pretty good but no pro-level who were able to make it that far.”

Foster said one of the things that he loves about the sport is the mental side of it and how the player is in control at all times.

“The better you get at any sport the more you realise it’s all mental, and that’s certainly the case with golf,” he said.

“In other sports a lot can be dictated by the random bounce of a ball or the skill level of your opponent, but in golf everything is in your control, and while you’re out there there’s no one you can blame but yourself.

“The ball is still, and you get to hit it in your timeframe, you can select whatever club you like and play whatever kind of shot you like, and your opponent doesn’t effect what happens during your shot.”

Foster said one of the things that has continued to attract him to Portland Golf Club has been that they embrace anyone who wants to come through their doors and be a part of it.

“You look at some of the elite clubs in Melbourne and the cost of entry is just prohibitively expensive, and beyond that there’s the challenge of simply being able to get a tee time to actually play, you’re often booking two weeks in advance” he said.

“But over here, apart from a handful of hours every week where its members only, the course is available for anyone to come and use,” he said.

“The goal here is we simply want as many people playing golf as possible… and what I would say to people out in the community is that if you’re interested in playing reach out to us and we can assist.

“The lower population benefits us a little bit, you could come in after work today to play nine holes and have a pretty easy run.

“My hope for the future is that the sport continues to grow, and people continue to take it up from an early age, it’s a great sport in that it connects you with a wide variety of people who you may otherwise never have encountered.

“It’s probably good for just life skills in that sense, being able to talk to people beyond your own demographic.

“It’s a universal game as well, if I know your handicap I can straight away have a pretty good idea of how good of a golfer you are.”