Look, of course I loved the win by the young Australian, “Koala Karl” Vilips, on the weekend. In just his fourth outing on the PGA Tour, the 23-year-old won the Puerto Rican Open by four strokes. He is one to watch.
But for my money, it was still only the second-best Australian golfing story of the month.
Ain’t sport grand, the way it keeps turning up things you never imagined before existed on heaven and earth – and certainly not on that piece of heaven on earth that is the 18th green?
For decades now, a bog-standard series of images have followed the victorious male golfer holing the winning putt to take the professional tournament. Momentarily leaving behind his very blandness, the victor raises his arms in air, and cries out in triumph before doing several fist-pumps.
Shortly thereafter, the grinning victor’s wife – who often brings to mind Raymond Chandler’s famous line, “She was a blonde, a blonde to make a bishop to kick a hole in a stained-glass window” – rushes forth to embrace him, often with a gaggle of small children in tow. And then they go back to their perfect lives, with this victory standing ever after as just one of many peaks of perfection. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and good luck to them all!)
But this win at the New Zealand Open last week wasn’t like that at all. For one thing, the triumphant golfer doesn’t look remotely like the cookie-cutter golfers we are used to, sleek, smooth and groomed to within a pinch of their perfection reflection.
Ryan Peake celebrates his win at Millbrook in the New Zealand Open.Credit: Getty Images
This bloke is bearded and swarthy, has bulging muscles, and not just tatts, but tatts on his tatts.
Friends? I think we have to face it. He actually looks like an escaped crim from Cellblock 13.
And the truly wondrous thing? He is!
Well, if not an escapee, and no longer a criminal, he is at least one who has served serious time in prison for his criminality. And so to the wonder of the story. This is an Australian who was on a path to glory, only to completely lose his way and find himself on a path to gory instead, making terrible errors of judgement.
See, a bit over a decade ago, Ryan Peake was a contemporary and teammate of future British Open winner Cam Smith. But whereas Smith stayed on the straight and narrow, and kept rising, Peake got a fast motorbike to range crooked, wide and low – soon joining that notorious bikie mob, the Rebels.
Ryan Peake (second from right) teamed up with a young Cameron Smith (far left) to win the 2010 Trans-Tasman Cup.Credit: Golf Australia
One terrible night, while Peake was with some of the Rebels, they so badly assaulted a man that, still only 21 years old, the one-time golf prodigy was sentenced to five years in jail. So while Smith rose to become the world No.2, won a British Open and pocketed tens of millions of dollars in prizemoney, Peake was getting a zebra sun-tan while languishing in prison, his weight ballooning to 130 kilograms.
But now, the moment when things start to change.
While Peake is locked up in Acacia Prison, Wooroloo, WA, he writes to a golf coach by the name of Ritchie Smith, who he had known in his younger years.
Staggered by what has happened to a young player he had considered to be on a par with Cameron Smith, Smith sends a message to Peake in prison asking for him to call. Peake ruses up one of his valuable allotted phonecalls for the week.
“I heard what happened to you,” Smith says. “What are you going to do?”
“I am thinking about an electrical apprenticeship,” Peake replies.
The phone goes quiet. Did he really say that? He did.
So now Smith comes back, forcefully.
“What about golf?”
As in, what about you take up the reins once more? Pick up where you left off? Smith wants to help.
Still with two years to go on his non-parole term, the thought had never occurred to Peake. That life was gone. But, on the other hand?
On the other hand, why not?
Going back to the cells, he tells the Rebel prisoners in there with him what he intends to do, and blow him down if they don’t totally support him from the first – even though he makes clear that he will be leaving the Rebels forthwith.
Peake celebrates after his New Zealand Open win.Credit: Getty Images
“Go for it!”
He starts losing weight, starts watching golf tournaments on TV, even starts hitting balls again around the grounds of Acacia Prison.
On just his third day release, with his family united in their support behind him, he wins the Lakelands Club comp in Perth. Brandishing the trophy high, he laughingly tells the assembled crowd: “You enjoy your night, but I’m back off to jail.”
A year later, upon his release, he and Richie Smith get to work, training like mad dogs to get his game back on track.
Peake holds the NZ Open trophy as a rainbow fills the skyCredit: Getty Images
“I didn’t know what tournament I would win,” Peake told me on Wednesday, “but I was confident I still had the skills to win something. When Ritchie Smith reached out, I was given an opportunity to make some small amends to my friends and family and all the other people I had let down so I wasn’t going to waste that opportunity. It also gave me a path to make money on the outside.”
RAH!
And yes, there was a problem getting into New Zealand last week, because of his criminal record, but at the last minute – with just 36 hours to showtime and tee-off – he was able to receive an exemption and get his visa.
Playing wonderfully well, he starts the final day four shots off the pace. And so yes, there is a lot of pressure. But, cue the great Australian cricketer and former WWII fighter pilot Keith Miller, when asked how he dealt with the pressure of Tests: “That’s not pressure,” Keith snorted. “Pressure is a Messerschmitt up your arse.”
Or indeed, serving five years in prison for serious assault, and seemingly throwing your life away. Peake had stared that down, and so can stare this down. Having drawn level by the final hole, he hits what could be the winning birdie putt from just under three metres out and … sees it drop!
He has won the New Zealand Open, and $NZ334,700 ($303,000) for his trouble!
His family and friends are there, while Richie Smith is watching from Perth in tears. In their own way, Cellblock 13 goes off.
“I’ve just changed my life,” Peake says after his win. “This is what I do. I just want to be here and play golf. The story is what it is. But I’m just out here playing golf. People make bad decisions, some worse than others, but it just goes to show that if you don’t actually give up on someone … you need to support them, and you just don’t know what is going to come from it. It’s life-changing.”
Indeed. Next stop, more tournaments – including the British Open – as the 31 year-old now has a three-year exemption on the Asian Tour. Meantime, though, he will go back to prison to visit those who backed him from the first.
“I will never turn my back on these guys,” he says to the press. “They genuinely wanted what was best for me.”
Ten days later, he still can’t quite believe it.
“I really did think I’d win something,” he told me on Wednesday. “I just didn’t think it would happen that fast, though.”
Bravo, to the lot of them. The best story in sport.
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