STEWART Ginn is in a reflective mood sitting on the banks of the River Kwai in Thailand.
He is not long back from a train trip to visit the war memorial honouring Australians who lost their lives on the infamous Thai-Burma Railway. Twelve allied soldiers lost their lives, 250,000 were forced into labour camps and 90,000 civilians died due to Japanese brutality during the building of the railway in WW2.
“What these Diggers went through was horrendous. Not just the Australians who fought but the English and the Americans. It’s unbelievable when you visit the museum,” he says.
At 77, Ginn, admits he does “slow travel” these days – in contrast to his much younger days as a genuine international golfer when he and his fellow Australians Bob Shearer, Jack Newton, Ian Stanley, Graham Marsh and Terry Gale flitted in and out of Asia, the UK and the USA chasing big purses.
“Just think of this too, Brian Jones (popular NSW professional) had a tour card in Japan when he was 17 if you don’t mind.
“We had to do it,” Ginn says, “there wasn’t much money on the Aussie tour and we had to play around the world.”
“Older guys like Peter Thomson, Kel Nagle, Bruce Crampton and Bob Charles had shown us the way.”
Stewart Ginn is now based in Malaysia, working for MST Golf.
Ginn says it was nothing for any one of them to fly across the world to play in Australia, usually landing the night before a big event and arriving on the first tee sleepless and heavily jet-lagged.
Indeed, he reckons one of his best wins – maybe even the highlight of his stellar career – came after he flew into Melbourne overnight from Japan, hit 50 balls on the practice fairway and headed for the first tee.
It was the 1979 Australian PGA Championship at Royal Melbourne and he emerged victorious with a winning score of 284. As usual, he cut an immaculately dressed traditional plus twos as he hoisted the winner’s Joe Kirkwood Cup.
“That was probably the win which stands out the most for me. To win it and beat the field I did including Seve (Ballesteros), Gary Player, Jack (Nicklaus), Hale Irwin and an emerging, young Greg Norman. Seve was a star and played everywhere. He used to the say ‘the further you get from home the smaller the golf hole becomes’. Classic Seve.
“I had grown up living in a house across the road from the 12th hole on the East Course at Royal Melbourne, had caddied there as a kid, and won the caddies’ championship when I was 11, ‘whipping’ Bruce Green (who went on to become the RM club professional),” Ginn says
Even better was the fact that his mother, Elizabeth and father, Paxton, were in the jam-packed gallery to witness it.
Ginn says promoter, Tony Charlton, was a visionary ahead of his time in Australia with the manner in which he brought huge galleries to local events. “He was LIV before LIV in a way,” he says.
One of the leading Australian professionals of his era, Stewart Ginn was always the snappy dresser.
“Greg Norman has always been a mate of mine and I reckon what he’s helped to do with
LIV is fantastic, taking the game to new audiences on a grand scale. Golf is genuinely a world game now. And young kids want to play it. Years ago Greg (Norman) tried to introduce a world tour with (then) PGA Tour commissioner, Tim Finchem. It never got off the ground.”
These days Ginn is based in Malaysia working for MST Golf which supplies all the simulators and indoor golf set ups around the country. He still teaches the game.
He often visits his native Tasmania to see three of his four children – Sarah, Selby and Sophie and their grandchildren. His son, Stewart Junior, lives in the US where he played College golf before pursuing a business career. He has two adopted children from war torn Ukraine and is about to adopt another from Mali. Ginn senior says proudly he and his wife Virginia “will soon have 12 grandkids.”
Although based in the US, Ginn’s son is heavily involved with Matthew Goggin in the Seven Mile Beach golf development in Hobart.
“This is a spectacular development which will become as successful long term as Barnbougle and Lost Farm. It is on the most pristine, links style land equal to the best in Scotland and Ireland.”
A snapshot of Stewart Ginn’s golfing success – tournament wins
• 1973 Tasmanian Open
• 1973 North Coast Open
• 1974 Martini International
• 1975 Tasmanian Open
• 1975 Victorian Open
• 1979 NSW PGA Championship
• 1979 Australian PGA Championship
• 1979 New Zealand Open
• 1980 Tasmanian Open
• 1986 Malaysian Open
• 1986 Tasmanian Open
• 1991 Malaysian Masters
• 1992 Indian Open
• 1995 Golf Digest Tournament
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