KERANG Golf Club champion four times.
Broke the course record twice.
Murray Downs Golf Club champion twice.
Course record holder there, too.
Then there’s the prestigious Commonwealth Golf Club in Melbourne.
Champion twice, and Division 1 pennant player for three years.
So what, for entertainment, is Olive Spitty going to do for her 15th birthday, which isn’t all that far away?
Sorry, 15th?
Yes, Olive is only 14.
She was a club champion at 10, a regular record-breaker since about the same age, the youngest Commonwealth club champion at 12, and the youngest in last year’s Victorian junior golf team squad at 13.
Olive can consistently smack a ball 230m off the tee.
For perspective, legendary women’s game big hitter Laura Davies, from the UK, was averaging about 242m at her prime.
One of Olive’s personal favourites, Australia’s Minjee Lee, a two-time major winner, does about the same as Davies as the game and the gear have progressed.
But the absolute best thing about the Lake Charm local and her golf, is she doesn’t really think she is anything special. Yet.
Olive was swinging her first clubs as a two-year-old and watching father Andrew play week in, week out, no one was overly surprised when she got her first handicap at seven.
But what did surprise everyone, including Dad, was what happened next.
In just a few short years that handicap was turned into +3 and Olive started taking the game apart wherever and whenever she played.
Talking to the Gannawarra Times the bubbly teenager was still able to laugh at herself.
“I played in my first competition when I was seven,” she recalls.
“I went around the 18 holes in 100-plus strokes – I didn’t win.”
As a 10-year-old, on holidays in the US, she signed up for the US Kids Golf tour championship at Pinehurst and finished 10th.
Her personal highlight was her fifth in the FCG Callaway World Championship.
“I play with Callaway clubs, and because I am still growing I basically need a new set every year and they have been very helpful to me with that,” Olive says.
“Right now I am about 165cm – about the same size as Mum – but Dad is almost 200cm, so I might need a few more sets yet,” she jokes.
The next challenge comes in April, when Olive heads to Perth for the Australian junior amateur championship and, if she is returned to the Victorian team, the Australian junior interstate teams matches.
Her father says Olive’s recruitment into the Victorian junior team will further accelerate her progress.
“If Olive is not on the golf course, and she is every weekend, you can always find her in the backyard chipping ball into a bucket, or working on her putting or something,” he says.
Olive says she plays a round once or twice a week after school, then on Saturday and Saturday, and practices “every other day”.
That’s a lot of golf, which might also explain why her favourite things at Mary McKillop College in Swan Hill are PE and home time, she says with a cheeky grin on her face.
But there will be much more golf ahead if Olive goes to college in the US and then turns pro – both things she wants to do.
She has a personal coach, the high-profile Dale Lynch in Melbourne, and is now entering the world of fitness programs, from light weights to a lot of stretching and flexibility work.
Olive is the first to admit there are a lot of “fantastic” golfers her age out there.
However, if you want an insight into the mind of a pro athlete in the making, Olive unknowingly spelt out the difference between players of her ilk and the mere mortals, without even noticing it.
You see, Olive doesn’t play a game of golf.
Her round is made up of 60 or 70 games.
“You can only play one shot at a time. I have a set up for every shot, every club, every situation,” she says.
“If it doesn’t work once you have to close that out of your mind, and set up for the next shot. Not the next hole, not the last hole, the next shot.
“I love playing, I love the challenge and that every day is a bit different, every shot can be a but different, and as I get older and stronger, my game gets a bit different.
“That’s why my pre-shot routine is so important, my concentration is so important.”
Yes, Olive is only 14.
