One of Australia’s foremost golf writers has penned his memoirs.

Brendan Moloney, golf correspondent for The Age in Melbourne at the height of the Greg Norman era, author of numerous golf club histories and more recently an award-winning writer for Golf Australia magazine, recently retired due to ill health.

He has been battling cancer for several years.

Seventy-five Plus Thais includes a bunch of anecdotes from some of the halcyon days of Australian golf and beyond.

Moloney covered most of Norman’s glory days in the 1980s and speaks about their relationship thus: “The first time I spoke to him, he came up to my desk at the press tent and said he wanted to see me after the interview. I thought this was pretty good, the Great White Shark wanting to see me alone.

“He was not happy and said, ‘Jesus Christ Jim, what was that crap you wrote about me in the paper today?” When I told him my name was not Jim, he seemed disconcerted and withdrew while offering an apology over his shoulder. He mistook me for Jim Ramsey, a Sydney-based tabloid reporter, although there was no physical resemblance.”

Although they were not necessarily close, Moloney describes his feelings when Larry Mize’s famous 50-metre chip hit the bottom of the cup on the 11th hole at Augusta National in 1987, denying Norman the victory at the Masters.

“For me, it was a dream shattered.”

Moloney was inducted into the Victorian Golf Hall of Fame in 2018, one of a handful of media people who have reached that landmark.

He is an avid golfer having been a member of Kingston Heath, Royal Park and more recently East Malvern.

His love of the offbeat story is reflected in the book with a review of Nullarbor Links, the longest golf course in the world, an interview with a man who played golf on the moon, and a story on two men who played golf together in a German prisoner of war camp in Poland during World War II.

Moloney is a great character of the sport. When he and others grew annoyed with the approach of the management group IMG when it was dominating Australian golf in the 1980s, he formed the Interstate Moloney Group, a mickey-take of the highest order where he as principal promised to charge players nothing, and do nothing for them.

Brendan Moloney worked as a journalist not only at The Age but at the Sun News Pictorial in Melbourne, the Rhodesia Herald and Port Moresby Post-Courier in Papua New Guinea in his 50-plus-year career.

Seventy-five Plus Thais, Brendan Moloney’s memoirs, published by Ryan Publishing. $39.95 available at www.ryanpub.com