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Summer fun continues for Murdoch
Senior Amateur champion out of Victoria Golf Club thrives in height of season
By Paul Ramsdell, PNGA Media
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Alison Murdoch
Photo credit: RCGA |
It started at a little nine-hole golf course near a summer cottage outside Ottawa. There were a couple of neighborhood tennis courts nearby and a dock to dive into the river to swim and thoroughly enjoy the best that every July and August in Ontario had to offer.
Alison Murdoch pretty much taught herself to play golf in that idyllic setting. Swinging golf clubs would get mixed in with all the basketball, tennis, swimming and skiing she did in her younger life, but she always knew she would come back full force to golf. And her father knew it as well.
"He gave me a set of golf clubs, a proper set of golf clubs, for university graduation," Alison said of her father. "He really took an interest in my game. Never tried to teach me anything, thank god, but was really my main supporter as far as golf was concerned."
That support through the years has led Alison Murdoch to some major accomplishments as a senior amateur player. She has won the Canadian Senior Women's title three times, the Irish Senior Ladies Open twice, and is the current title holder of both those competitions.
On the regional level last summer, she added the British Columbia Senior Women's crown and the title for the Pacific Northwest Golf Association.
Put that all together and it's easy to see why the 56-year-old from Victoria Golf Club was named the Senior Women's Player of the Year for the PNGA.
And it all started as an 8-year-old enjoying summer to the fullest.
"Those two months and the cottage definitely were my foothold in golf."
Along with her father, Robert Murdoch, an admiral in the Canadian Navy.
"Certainly he was a very big supporter of my efforts in golf right from the beginning."
His position with the Navy forced him to move his family around frequently, but he always tried to make sure nothing got in the way of those two months each summer at the cottage.
He passed away a year and a half ago, but still saw Alison win her first Canadian Senior Women's title.
"He saw me win one, and it was very rewarding for me to see how much pleasure he took from that particular performance (in 2002)," she said.
That victory at Saint Johns, New Brunswick, will always be special.
"It's pretty important for me to win my own national title. I was over the moon the first time I did it."
She has since added back-to-back titles in 2004 and 2005, winning this year in DeWinton, Alberta. She also has the national title of Ireland two years running and finally broke the ice in the B.C. Senior Women's Championship with a victory this year after four runner-up trophies and a third-place finish.
"It was very frustrating. I was the perennial bridesmaid," Murdoch said of B.C. championship. "That was really a big deal to finally get that monkey off my back."
It's just another example of the competitive success Murdoch is now enjoying.
"Certainly, I'm playing better now than I ever have before," she said.
And she's certainly playing a lot more golf, now that she's retired from her position as a manager with Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
In retirement, she has the opportunity to play six days a week, including numerous recreational rounds at Victoria Golf Club with her friends, including Berne Neufeld.
"If it's raining, Alison's out there. If it's blowing, Alison's out there," Neufeld said. "Because you never know what conditions you'll be playing in a tournament and I think that's one of the reasons she did so well in Ireland. The weather wasn't unlike what we have here sometimes."
Neufeld said when Murdoch is playing in the Ladies' Day competition on Tuesdays at Victoria Golf Club, it's with the same intensity as in the finals of a national championship.
"When she plays, just going out, she plays at a tournament level all the time. ... She always has the same routine," Neufeld said.
"In the heat of competition, she wants everything to be automatic."
Retirement has allowed Murdoch to play in tournaments she didn't have time for before.
Topping that list is the PNGA Senior Women's Championship, which she won at Yakima (Wash.) Country Club. Murdoch was tied for fifth after a 76, but then put together a 69 the second day to edge Ginny Burkey of Fircrest, Wash., who had a 74-72-146.
"That was a magical round for me, that second day of that tournament," she said. "I can remember one shot that didn't turn out the way I expected it to, but apart from that it was definitely an example of being in the zone."
With two national titles and two regional titles in the past year, she has been a frequent visitor to that zone.
Related content:
» PNGA announces 2005 Players of the Year
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