Gilly inducted into the Hall of Fame in December

Springbok and Protea golfer Gilly Tebbutt was inducted into the Hall of Fame at a glittering occasion at Oubaai in December by Mr Justice Pat Tebbutt. This was his induction speech.

Gilly was born Gilly Whitfield. Her parents Gerry and Doreen Whitfield were both avid golfers, Gerry a scratch handicap. Gerry was a dairy farmer on his farm Bonteheuwel which was expropriated by the Nationalist Government to create the suburb of Bonteheuwel near the Cape Town airport and it was on this farm and steeped in a golfing atmosphere, because Gerry played about 5 days a week, that Gilly and her siblings, Lynn and Alan grew up. Alan and Gilly the two younger children built themselves a little 3 hole course on the farm, using jam jars for the holes. Gilly in fact started her golf there at the age of 5. Her first clubs were a cut down 5 iron and 2 wood, which hang on the wall of the pub of our house to this day.

Gilly’s first round of golf on a course was a family 4-ball outing one Sunday afternoon at Rondebosch. She was 10 yrs old. Being so young and playing a proper round for the first time, Gilly played very badly and at one stage threw a crying tantrum. Gerry was livid with her and told her that “if you ever do that again, I will take your clubs away and never allow you to play golf again”. It was a lesson Gilly never forgot.

Gilly’s sister and brother are both also magnificent golfers. Lynn won the SA Stroke-Play championship in 1970 and in the same year she played for South Africa against a French touring team. She has regularly represented Western Province. Alan, like his Dad, also got down to a scratch handicap, and as a senior was chosen to represent South Africa in a test match against a British team in 2004.

Gilly, however, has been the sportswoman in the family. She played first team hockey, tennis and netball at school and first league hockey and tennis afterwards. But golf has always been her passion. In 1972 at the age of 18 she won her first Western Province Matchplay Championship. She has since won it a total of 14 times. She has also won the WP Strokeplay championship 13 times. And she represented WP for 37 consecutive yrs, never missing an Inter-Provincial tournament from 1972 until 2009, when she retired from inter-provincial golf.

In 1984 Gilly won her first South African Match-Play title. She went on to win 5 SA Match-Play and 4 South African Stroke-Play championships, winning the “double” in 1991. She also won the Hong-Kong Open Amateur Championship three years in succession in 1989, 1990 and 1991, the first player ever to have done so before or since. And she has won her club championship at Rondebosch 33 times, which must be some sort of record.

Gilly played regularly for South Africa from 1981 until she retired from SA golf in 2008, including playing in two World Amateur Team Championships in Vancouver and Malaysia. She was the coach of the SA team at the World Championship in Germany in 2000.

What is the secret of Gilly’s success? She has a tough competitive nature and a fierce determination to do better that her opponents. She never gives up. I remember one WP Championship where she was 3 down with 5 to play. As she walked to the 14th tee, I said to her “hang in there”, she turned to me with a withering look and said “what do you mean hang in there? I am going to win this match” – which she did! Which is why she has won nearly 100 tournaments in her career!

But Gilly has never let her competitive spirit mar her attitude on the course. Her behaviour is always immaculate. Perhaps the finest tribute to her has come from a complete stranger. She was playing in a SA Championship at Rand Park, I was watching her, when a woman spectator came up to me and said “your wife is playing very well”. Then she said this “My daughter (a girl of about 18 who was walking with her) has started playing golf and is showing a lot of promise and I said to her – ‘if you do well I will be proud of you but I won’t mind if you don’t, but if you can conduct yourself both on and off the golf course like Gilly Tebbutt; if your course manners are the same as that of Gilly Tebbutt; and if you can always behave yourself like Gilly Tebbutt does, whether you are playing well or not, then I will be truly proud of you” Praise indeed; but that is Gilly. Gerry and Doreen would be very proud of you this evening and we your family and friends rejoice with you in the great honour with which you have been awarded, it is well deserved.

Gilly has achieved mightily in women’s golf but she has also constantly cherished, maintained and promoted the highest ideals, standards and traditions of this magnificent game of which she has been such a part for well nigh 50 years.

I invite her to come forward and be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

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