Golf.com.au – 1996 till Now

It seemed like a crazy idea back in 1996 – to start up a golfing website. The dot.com bubble had not yet emerged from the suds and the internet was a wriggling baby in the bathtub.

I remember having a chat, in Melbourne, with Hugh Irvine – a friend and business associate who was doing some contracting work for Cisco Systems – the company whom I managed locally. Hugh had a close relationship with Robert Elz – the man at the University of Melbourne who was “handing out” domain names at the time. This was a pretty thankless volunteer role – and of course Robert was ultimately shafted as commercial interests moved in and the whole thing passed across to MelbourneIT which was eventually floated on the Stock Exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars. I don’t think poor old Robert ever saw a cent from the float after 15 years of volunteer work that was largely responsible for bringing the Internet to Australia.Anyhow that is a whole other story which has absolutely nothing to do with Australia’s first golfing website.

Suffice to say that I have Hugh (and of course Robert) to thank for allowing me to register golf.com.au. I remember, even at that time, there was some reluctance to allow the registration of a generic domain name such as “golf” but Robert and Hugh were happy that my intentions were bona fide and that I really did own a legitimate golfing business – which I did. It was called Australian Golf Direct and it operated out of the ugliest little rental suite imaginable at 616 St Kilda Road (from memory).

The company was literally a two man and a dog affair – and I do mean literally. I had a young, previously out of work, golf pro manage the thing for me. The phone was handled by “Bob” a blind man who used to operate out of the kitchen with his loyal lab curled at his feet below the kitchen table. Bob had a great sense of humour, had never swung a golf club in his life and was provided to us on subsidy from the RVIB (Royal Victorian Institute of the Blind) across the road. He relished the fact that he was able to exchange golfing yarns over the phone with customers as if he were a low-handicap player who knew his stuff. Little did they know that he was a blind man …but hey…they didn’t think to ask the question.

Anyhow, having got the domain name secured, I set about finding someone to build a website. Not the easiest task, since web designers in 1996 were not exactly falling out of the trees. I remember one Group in Sydney (can’t remember their name) did profess to have built a few websites so I landed on their doorstep complete with printed product brochures and gave them the job of throwing the images up onto the web – with some pricing and order forms. I later transferred this web design work to the wife of a friend in Adelaide who managed to pretty up the graphics and get the whole thing on a more commercial footing.

Golf.com.au was born – Australia’s first golfing website.

More to follow – Original Screenshots etc. Stay tuned

Aidan Montague

Golf.com.au