How a Castle Hill Country Club member and a Gold Logie winner are committed to vanquishing cancer (Hint: it involves playing a lot of golf!)
It’s amazing how such devastating loss can bring out the absolute best in people.
In May 2023, Castle Hill Country Club member Rodney Frost lost his golf partner Mark Johnston to cancer just four weeks after he was diagnosed with the disease. Johnston had been complaining of a sore back he thought was the consequence of work or golf. It turned out to be a tumour on his spine.
On Christmas Day 2022, Frost’s sister-in-law, Alison Longmire, a 40-year-old wife and mother of two, was told she had cancer, which was later diagnosed as terminal. She sadly passed away in August 2023 after a torturous eight-month battle.
Nine days prior to that bombshell, Frost’s business partner lost her husband, Mario Monteiro, 63, after a short battle with ‘the big C’. He left behind two daughters and a son.
When Frost reached out to people in his network for support, it became evident that so many people were going through similar situations with family and friends, including multiple members of his golf club that had recently passed.
“It got to the point where I just felt something had to be done,” Frost tells Australian Golf Digest. “I wanted to make a difference. I decided to raise funds for cancer research through golf so that fewer people and their loved ones have to go through the suffering of cancer.”
The catch: 100 percent of the funds raised had to go exactly where it needs to go, not get absorbed in admin. fees and other costs like so many charity organisations do. “We needed transparency and hopefully our great golf community will get on board,” Frost adds.
So, the hunt began to find a like-minded charity to partner with that could use Frost’s love of golf as the main driver to achieve one clear goal: vanquish cancer.
By chance, Frost was reading a book called The Story So Far, which detailed the Love Your Sister charity founded by Gold Logie winner Samuel Johnson after he lost his sister, Connie, to a much-publicised battle with cancer. When he finished the book, Frost knew he had found the perfect ‘teammate’.
“I e-mailed Sam that night and he assured me all funds that were given to his Love Your Sister charity went directly to researchers that have legally binding agreements. It was time to get to work on an important project!”
That project? One Day – a charity golf tournament that sees participants hit the fairways for 24 hours straight to honour those that have lost their lives to cancer – and to feel “a smidgen of the pain” that those currently living with cancer are experiencing.
Contestants team up for both four-ball best-ball and individual Stableford events and are encouraged to raise as much money as they can for their marathon efforts via sponsorship from friends, family and work colleagues.
“We play through the night with lit-up courses, using day-maker lights, glow sticks and hitting glow-in-the-dark balls,” Frost says.
Last year’s inaugural event at Castle Hill Country Club in Sydney’s north-west raised a whopping $104,379 for precision medicine, much-needed cash that highlights golf’s – and golfers’ – willingness to make a difference, says Johnson.
“One Day Golf is such a great idea,” says the man who rose to fame in 2016 for his Logie-winning portrayal of Molly Meldrum in the eponymous television mini-series “Molly”.
“Through this amazing event, we’re committed to the vanquishment of all 500 cancers with the use of precision medicine. Money raised from One Day goes directly to the MoST (Molecular Screening and Therapeutics) expansion program. It’s important to know that 28 percent of Aussies live in rural or remote areas and are nearly 20 percent more likely to die from cancer. So, 100 percent of this money is spent on patients in all postcodes, from Darlinghurst to Dubbo.”
Similar to the Cancer Council’s Longest Day charity golf day, where its participants strive to complete 72 holes in a day, One Day takes the challenge to a whole new level.
“The most holes completed in our 2023 event was 108, while the least was 105,” says Frost, warning One Day is not for the faint hearted. It is a ‘ton’ of golf to satisfy any golf tragic, however, and all for a terrific cause.
To register yourself or your club for a 2024 One Day event, visit oneday.loveyoursister.org
