Feature
Two Australians in their fifties play for a Masters invitation
Graham Hourn, 58, works 12-hour shifts at a Queensland coal mine. Richard Heath, 55, spent 15 years at the European Golf Association. Both tee off for Australia at Te Arai Links on Thursday.
“It was five or six years and then the wife got pregnant so I thought I’d better get a real job,” Graham Hourn told Golf Australia last October. He played professionally from 1992 to 1997, then took a job at a coal mine near Kingaroy in Queensland.
Hourn is 58. On Thursday he tees off for Australia at the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship at Te Arai Links in New Zealand. The winner gets an invitation to the 2027 Masters and exemptions into the 2027 Open and the Amateur Championship; the runner-up earns a place in The Open’s qualifying series. Of the seven players named for the side in September, five are 20 or younger, according to Australian Golf Digest. The other is Richard Heath, who is 55, lives near Lausanne and spent 15 years at the European Golf Association, the last ten of them as its general secretary.
Five days on, five days off
Hourn has worked at the mine for more than 20 years. His shifts are 12 hours, and he works five days on and five days off, leaving home before sunrise and getting back after dark, according to Australian Golf Digest. He told the magazine last year that he usually doesn’t touch a club for the five working days, then plays two or three times and practises a little on his days off.
He has won 16 consecutive club championships at Kingaroy Golf Club, and this year he retained the Queensland Senior Amateur and finished second in the National Seniors Matchplay. As a professional in the 1990s he played alongside Rod Pampling and John Senden, who both went on to win on the PGA Tour.
This is his second Asia-Pacific Amateur. In Dubai last October, at the Majlis course of Emirates Golf Club, he shot 79 and 75 and missed the cut on 154, +10. Thailand’s Fifa Laopakdee won that week after a three-hole playoff and returns at Te Arai as defending champion.
Fifteen years at the EGA
Heath’s athlete profile at the University of Oxford, where he studied for a master’s in major programme management, says he took up the game after a neighbour gave him a golf club. According to Golf Australia, he has played in the 2000 US Open and two PGA Tour events.
He joined the European Golf Association in 2006 as a championship manager and was its general secretary from 2011 until early 2021, when he became general secretary of the Swiss PGA. He won the European Mid-Amateur Championship in 2015 and again in 2019, when he closed with a 66 at St Laurence Golf in Finland to win by eight shots.
At Frilford Heath in July he finished joint second in The R&A’s Senior Amateur Championship, six shots behind the American Bryan Hoops, who won on −10. Last year he lost a playoff for the European Seniors Championship in Türkiye. He plays out of Golf Club Lausanne, and Te Arai will be his first Asia-Pacific Amateur.
The case against picking them
In a round-up published in September, Australian Golf Digest argued that younger players should get priority when Australia’s team is chosen, and that a championship offering starts at Augusta and in The Open should go to “the rising stars, not those fading gracefully”. It named three teenagers it said had reason to feel aggrieved: Hamish Farquharson and Spencer Harrison, both 18, and Jonty Lunson, 19, who was 166th in the World Amateur Golf Ranking on 12 September.
The same piece said Hourn and Heath “qualified fair and square” through that ranking.
The Asia-Pacific Amateur was first played in 2009. Hideki Matsuyama won it in 2010 and 2011. Guan Tianlang won in 2012 and played the 2013 Masters aged 14, the youngest player in the Masters’ history.
Te Arai’s South course
The championship is played on the South course at Te Arai Links, about 90 minutes north of Auckland. Designed by Bill Coore and opened in 2022, it plays to a par of 72 over 6,259 metres. Its fescue fairways run through sand dunes and the Pacific is in view from 16 holes, according to Australian Golf Digest.
There are 120 players in the field. Harry Takis, the highest-ranked player in the field, is one of three Australians back from last year’s side; the others are Kayun Mudadana and Hourn. The four rounds run from Thursday 29 October to Sunday 1 November, with live scores on the championship’s website.
Sources
- Golf Australia: Bright start for Dowling in Asia-Pac in Dubai (October 2025)
- Australian Golf Digest: Senior amateur Graham Hourn, 57, soaking up Dubai experience
- Australian Golf Digest: News you may have missed, October 2026
- Australian Golf Digest: Complete guide to the 2026 Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship
- Golf Australia: Australian contingent named for Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship
- Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship: 2025 results
- Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship: official site
- European Golf Association: Richard Heath recognised at Golf de Morfontaine
- European Golf Association: Heath and Eikenaar claim Mid-Amateur titles
- Swiss PGA: New Swiss PGA general secretary
- University of Oxford Sport: Athlete profile, Richard Heath
- The R&A: Hoops and Tennant claim victories in The R&A Senior Amateurs
- Wikipedia: Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship
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