HE’S just been declared the best and fairest player in the AFL team that this year won Alice Springs’ Under 18 premiership, yet Sam Rumpff has already announced his retirement from a game he’s been playing since he could walk.
And this summer he’s playing his final season of cricket with Federal Cricket Club’s A grade team, bidding farewell to a sport in which he’s been a state representative since his early teens.
Rumpff, a multi-talented young sportsman who modestly concedes he’s ‘been blessed with good hand-eye coordination,’ is giving it all up to focus on golf. And his decision has surprised nobody.
Just turned 18, Rumpff is already considered the best golfer in the Northern Territory, with a record that only confirms those rave reviews.
In early August he shot rounds of 71, 73 and 71 to score an eight-stroke victory in the NT Country Championship at Humpty Doo. A few weeks earlier, he had won the NT Classic Championship by an equally emphatic margin at Alice Springs, his home course.
Rumpff grew up in Maryborough, in country Victoria, where he played ‘every sport you can think of’ as a boy – usually with rare expertise. At just eight, he was a member of the town’s A reserve cricket squad, and was selected for Country Week teams while barely in his teens.
During the early Covid years, his parents – both nurses – travelled the country in a caravan, eventually reaching Cairns, where they remained for more than a year.
Work opportunities brought them to Alice Springs in 2024, Rumpff’s mother gaining a position at the local hospital, and his father joining the medical team at the Pine Gap communications base, 18km southwest of Alice.
At 15, and with relatively little experience at the game, Rumpff joined Alice Springs Golf Club, with a handicap of two.
Following some impressive recent results, Sam Rumpff is considered the best young golfer in the Northern Territory.
He’d started playing the game when he was 11, encouraged by his uncle Dean Ford, now the president of the Talbot Golf Club, near Ballarat. By 12, he was playing junior pennants and representing the district.
He decided earlier this year that golf would become his primary sporting focus – about the same time he was picked in the ACT/Northern Territory team for the Australian Junior Interstate Teams series at Moonah Links.
Though they were unable to match their better-resourced opponents, the composite team did manage to claim a point in their match with Western Australia – Rumpff beating WA’s No 1 player Nate Russell 4&3.
Rumpff had been part of Golf Australia’s Junior Emerging Talent Program since he was 16 and, in 2024, gained a scholarship which allowed him to travel to Queensland to work with GA’s high-performance team.
He’s coached by Gold Coast-based Ji McBryde, a GA high-performance coach, who visits the NT twice a year to conduct clinics and work with elite young players like Rumpff.
“We just clicked,” Rumpff said. “He’s just like a footy coach. We go fishing together and hang out. He’s amazing.”
Rumpff recognises the challenges presented by living in a remote part of the country.
“It’s different in Alice,” he said. “It’s easy to be the best in the state, but it’s much harder to become the best in the country.
“There are two or three other kids like me,” he said. “We get cool opportunities, but we miss out on competing regularly against the best players, playing great courses, and we don’t have regular one-on-one coaching.”
When we spoke, Rumpff was preparing to contest the Alice Springs club championship, and later in the year he plans to compete in the Tasmanian Amateur Championship.
Still in Year 12 at St Philip’s College, Rumpff practices every day and works part-time in the Alice Springs pro shop. He is considering studying – and playing golf – at an American university, possibly as soon as next year.
He’s aware of the significant opportunities that collegiate golf can offer young players – including access to some of the major US PGA tours for the very best graduates.
Playing golf professionally is his burning ambition, but if that doesn’t eventuate, he’ll find some other role in the golfing industry.
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