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Club and Racquet Challenge – Our Story

In 1994, Andy Haden, a former New Zealand All Black Rugby Captain, decided to introduce a new sporting event called ‘Club and Racquet Challenge’ – C & R.

The first event was conducted at Wairakei International Golf Club and local tennis courts at Taupo, NZ.

Andy’s introduction of the event is as follows:

“Sports fans have long debated which skills make a true champion.

Some say it is the poise and precision of the golfer.

Others argue that it's the agility and reflexes of the tennis player.

The Club and Racquet Challenge combines two of the world's most popular individual sports.

In this 'open' event all competitors play off scratch.

At the golf men play from the Championship tees and ladies play from the forward tees.

The tennis doubles are contested on a 'first to 35 points' basis.

Points won are divided by seven with each seven points representing one golf hole.

Service is rotated after five serves.

The tennis portion in this round of the Club and Racquet Challenge is therefore worth five points to the winning pair and proportionately less to the losing pair”.

Steve Walker and Phil Waight were invited to play in the 1997 event at Wairakei International Golf Club, Taupo.

At the completion of that event and during their flight home, we decided to run a Club and Racquet Challenge in Queensland.

After discussion with various resorts in Queensland, we settled on RACV Royal Pines Resort.

The decision was relatively easy, two undercover courts plus additional outside courts, world standard golf course and accommodation, all at the one location.

The first event held at RACV Royal Pines was March 1998.

Steve and Phil as well as several other initial C & R players continued to play in Andy Haden’s C & R events in NZ and Fiji.

The highest number of players to play in the C & R event at Royal Pines was 106.

In 2000, the Master’s Event was created for players over 45 years of age.

The last New Zealand event was at Wairakei International Golf Club, Taupo in 2007.

The Queensland C & R continues to flourish.

In 2004, a Club and Racquet event was conducted at the Wentworth Golf Club in Surry, UK.

In 2011, Brisbane was faced with its worst floods since 1974 and as a result of the devastation in Brisbane, the C & R was cancelled.

In 2012 and 2013, it was decided to change the format for a different approach. In 2012 we had teams from Qld., NZ and NSW competing in a team’s event at Royal Pines. In 2013 we had another team’s event between Qld. and NSW in the Hunter Valley.

Queenstown, NZ became our new home for golf in 2014 and 2015.
RACV Royal Pines were awarded the Australian PGA golf event for five years and they renovated each nine holes over a two-year period. Hence, we decided to play golf at The Hills, Millbrook and Jack’s Point golf courses.

Due to the Queenstown trip being extremely successful, we then arranged a special trip to America where we played several outstanding golf courses around Monterey Peninsula. Courses played included Cypress Point, Pebble Beach, Monterey Peninsula, Pasatiempo, Spyglass Hill and Tehama Golf Clubs.

In 2017 we introduced a ‘Golf Only’ event. It became apparent that many past players were still wanting to compete at Royal Pines but were unable to play tennis for many reasons including ‘age’. This event has become extremely popular as it includes two-man ambrose, Canadian foursomes and 4 ball best ball.

The Club and Racquet Challenge format has again been completed every year since 2017 and continues to be an exciting event with many twists.
2022 will be the 18th event of the traditional Club and Racquet Challenge concept and the 23rd event since our first in 1998.