Below is an article which will soon be published in an edition of Inside Golf as written by Member David Newbury. It details the life of long term member Laurel Jones (far right) who after over 
48 years at Keperra has decided to give the game away.
“One of Keperra Country Golf Club’s most decorated golfers, Laurel Jones, has reluctantly called time on her outstanding career that spanned more than four decades at the popular Brisbane club.
In November, Laurel played her final round – albeit a shortened round. After leaving the golf course, she placed her clubs, including her trusty Wilson Staff 8133 putter she has used so deftly since 1972, in the boot of her car for the final time.
A legendary figure around the club, Laurel, whose name appears on the honourboards many times, has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and no longer has the will to play golf.
The 79-year-old has accepted her fate – albeit with a heavy heart.
“I played my final game of golf on Wednesday, November 8 because I feel I no longer have the strength to continue,” lamented Laurel, who finished her career on a 19.6 handicap, but played off four in her prime.
“It took me four woods and two putts to get a six (double bogey) on the 10th and I hit them all okay … and straight.
“On the 12th, my third hole of the day, I got in a bunker and I didn’t have the power to get the ball out so I picked up and didn’t play any more holes.
“My swing is still there, but it’s not generating anything.”
Laurel might have hit her final putt, but she remains loyal to the club and often turns up to watch her many friends play.
Keperra CGC is well known for being a family friendly club and its staff and members have rallied around in support of Laurel in her time of need … such is the love for her.
Her golfing achievements at Keperra are to be admired.
Laurel joined the club in 1975 and won her first honourboard event, the Captain’s Fourball in 1976. With various playing partners, she won a further four titles in 1983-’86-’96 and 2017.
She won five club championships between 1978 and 1995. Twelve times she has captured the Foursome Championship with different partners … the most recent in 2019.
“I won the foursomes with my son Peter and also Matthew Dowling (former club champion) and Gavin Lawrence (the club’s general manager) many years ago,” Laurel said.
Laurel won the Matchplay Championship four times and the Neil Harvey Foursomes twice. Then there is the 36-hole Weekend Gross title (four times) and the nett title once.
She has four aces on her resume – two on the eighth, one on the 12th and another on the 17th.
It’s an outstanding golfing achievement at a major metropolitan club by any stretch of the imagination.
On two occasions Laurel qualified to play in the Australian Amateur – the first at Indooroopilly (now St Lucia) in 1975 and a few years later at Royal Queensland. Both times she finished inside the top 16 to qualify for the matchplay.
“The thrill at the time was being under the handicap limit to enter,” Laurel said.
Of course, Laurel played in numerous Queensland Amateur Championships with distinction. In one of those events, she played with a new set of clubs delivered a day before the event.
Sydney born and raised, Laurel trained as a secondary school teacher (physical education) and was a member at Dunheved and Foxhills golf clubs before moving to Brisbane with her husband in 1975. She joined Nudgee GC where she won the club championship and later joined Keperra.
“I have my name on the honourboard of every club I belonged to,” said Laurel, who also represented Keperra in pennant from 1976 until Covid struck in 2019.
Still, one of her proudest achievements at Keperra was helping guide junior golfers.
“I looked after the juniors in the 1980s and ’90s. They’d come in on a Sunday morning and I’d put them in groups of four and hit them off ahead of the adult field,” Laurel explained.
“I would play in the group behind them and if they misbehaved, I would not let them play with their friends again. But most of them were pretty good, which might have been because of the teacher in me.
“They had respect for me and I had no idea what they did when I wasn’t around.
“When they came in, I did their cards and a presentation and they had to make a speech and do all the right things.
“I still see some of them after all these years in the streets or at the shops and they come up and speak to me. They have all grown up and sometimes I don’t recognise them.”
Laurel, who played three or four rounds a week for many years, said Keperra CGC had been her life.
“It has been my life and I don’t want to do anything else, actually. I haven’t really been interested in anything else for a long time other than spending quality time with my children Alicia and Peter and four grandkids.
“It’s very sad I have terminal lung cancer, but I have to get on with life because I can’t do anything about it.”
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