The lives and careers of two very different but much-loved characters in Australian golf ended just days apart during the last days of winter.
In little more than a few days in late August, Australian golf lost two wonderful contributors in Glenn Joyner [above image] and Frank Williams [below image].
Hailing from South Australia, Joyner was a regular contender among the giants of the game in the late 1980s and 1990s. In more recent years he was a prolific winner on home soil on the PGA Legends Tour and topped qualifying for the 2022 Senior Open at Gleneagles in Scotland. Just weeks later he would be diagnosed with Stage 4 bowel cancer and ultimately lost his spirited fight inside a year, passing on August 26 just a week shy of his 59th birthday.
When we profiled Joyner in the January issue this year, he signed off with a mantra: “Today, not tomorrow”. “If you have things you want to do, don’t hesitate,” Joyner told us.
Eerily, that line represents an accurate summation of the career of Williams, an Englishman who came to Australia to sell vacuum cleaners for Electrolux then changed the golf landscape here forever. Seeking to emulate the game’s most revered tournament, Williams partnered with David Inglis to launch the Australian Masters at Huntingdale.
Its early years rode on the back of Greg Norman’s presence to draw enormous galleries through the gate, with Williams unafraid to challenge golf’s norms in the name of entertainment. He would go on to move to the US to manage Norman’s business affairs, helping to build the Great White Shark empire before returning to Bowral in the New South Wales Southern Highlands. Williams passed away on August 31 at age 84.
