[Photo: Golf Digest US]
Robert Allenby has been added to a list of some of Australian golf’s most famous names with induction into the Victorian Golf Hall of Fame.
One of Australian golf’s most dominant forces at the turn of the century, Allenby will be officially unveiled as a Hall of Fame inductee at the Victorian Golf Industry Awards to be held at Southern Golf Club on Thursday night.
It is a venue less than 20 kilometres from where his golf journey began at East Malvern Golf Club before going on to accumulate a dozen wins across the globe.
A four-time winner on both the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, Allenby burst onto the scene as one of the early graduates of the Victorian Institute of Sport.
He won the 1991 Victorian Open as an amateur by seven shots – “I still regard that as probably my best victory ever around the world” – and then a month later, lost to a Wayne Riley bomb on the 72nd hole at the Australian Open at The Royal Melbourne Golf Club.
It was a mere taste of what was to come.
He was both the PGA Tour of Australasia Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year in 1992 and won the Australian Open for the first time in 1994 at Royal Sydney Golf Club.
But it would be a five-year stretch starting in 2000 that forever entrenched Allenby as a great of Australian golf.
Starting in December 2000, Allenby won the Australian PGA Championship three times, the Australian Masters twice and claimed a second Australian Open as part of his historic ‘Triple Crown’ in three consecutive weeks in 2005.
In reflecting on his elevation into the Victorian Golf Hall of Fame, Allenby recalled his early days at East Malvern and his progression into pennants and Victorian and Australian amateur teams.
“I still remember the days when Box Hill were playing Kingston Heath and the Langford-Jones guys were all there,” said Allenby.
“I think it was Bruce Langford-Jones I was playing against. They said it was a match of David and Goliath and won like 6&4 at Rossdale I think. I was only maybe 15 or 16 when all that happened.
“I remember the days at Kew Golf Club, winning the Victorian Junior.
“I progressed as a junior, I went from Box Hill to Yarra Yarra Golf Club and helped Yarra Yarra go from Division 2 to Division 1.
“It just sort of led from there and I just really kept getting better and better.”
A key figure for Allenby in those formative days was Greg Norman.
Norman was the world No.1 when Allenby joined the pro ranks and he took every opportunity to absorb information from the game’s best player.
“Anyone that was better than me, I always looked at them and dissected everything that they did from not only just their ability swing-wise, but also their mental ability,” Allenby added.
“When I first got the chance to play with Greg Norman, he was world No.1 so I really got into his head and asked him a lot of different questions.
“As good as I was at 19, 20 years of age, the media were obviously putting me in as the next Greg Norman. I thought, Well, I’d better to get into someone’s head. And I got into Greg Norman’s head and I just started asking him questions.
“I learned a lot from him and he knows that, over the years, we’ve built up a great relationship.
“Greg Norman was a huge influence on my golf.”
Other prominent professionals previously inducted into the Victorian Golf Hall of Fame include Peter Thomson (2011), Bob Shearer (2011), Ivo Whitton (2011), Margie Masters (2013), David Graham (2013), Jane Lock (2015) and Michael Clayton (2015).
Allenby’s coach for more than two decades from the age of 14, Steve Bann, was inducted last year along with course architect, Vern Morcom.
