Lonard And His Liver Limp Back Home

Sun Herald

Sunday December 19, 2004

PETER STONE

AUSTRALIAN Open and PGA champion Peter Lonard boarded a flight to the US yesterday, perhaps contemplating a spell in an alcohol detox unit on arrival home at Orlando, Florida.

He has had a heady month, celebrating three wins in a row, plus a big season-ending wind-down in Melbourne after the Masters last Sunday night, when his mate Jimmy Barnes put on an hour-long show.

The highlight of the evening was when Lonard joined Barnes to sing Working Class Man. The suspicion was that the sound man turned down Lonard's mike and that Barnes removed his earpiece so he didn't have to hear Lonard attempt to strike a note.

On Thursday, Lonard and Paul Gow held their charity day at the Lakes, followed by dinner at the casino, raising about $200,000 for the Ian Thorpe Fountain for Youth charity. That was another all-night affair.

And what of the other Barnes boy, American golfer Ricky Barnes? It's been revealed that he was fined the maximum for his misdemeanours in the Masters on Sunday, with a farcical five-putt plus a fair amount of chopping on the 17th tee. Not revealed until now is that he had been fined after a similar incident during the second round.

There was a lot of ranting and raving in the media centre at Huntingdale on Sunday when IMG Australasia managing director Martin Jolly arrived from Hong Kong.

Jolly, by all reports, was in a rage about media stories that golf has become boring and he tore down every negative clipping from the display board in the media centre.

"That's the end," he shouted. "No more tents. No more food."

Masters champion Richard Green had his own celebration on Sunday evening with a few mates Geoff Ogilvy, Adam Scott and Robert Allenby among them and on Wednesday blew away a few cobwebs by going for a spin around Melbourne's Calder Park Raceway. He reached 245kmh in the main straight, which was the easy part. Braking to take the corner was the hard bit.

Greg Chalmers is contemplating a trip to Panama in January for the first of the 2005 Nationwide Tour events.

He is buoyant after his pre-Christmas feats at home tied second in the Masters, tied 15th in the Open and tied 20th in the PGA which boosted him to 15th on the Order of Merit with $136,713.

His only opportunity overseas next year is a conditional card to the Nationwide Tour so he has to take every start he can.

Ernie Els is to design a new course at Wilton, south of Sydney, taking over from Greg Norman's Medallist company.

© 2004 Sun Herald

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