Roxy ready to rock it at the Narrabri Golf Club

Hundreds of people will roll up to the Narrabri Golf Club on Saturday afternoon for a charity golf match and family fun day.

A three-person nine-hole ambrose will be contested from 1pm, and the family fun day will begin at 3pm and continue well into the night.

The event will be hosted by LPGA, LET and ALPG pro Rebecca Artis who moved to Narrabri in 2019 following 11 years abroad where she took on the world’s best golfers during her successful career.

She immediately became interested in hosting a golf day at the Narrabri Golf Club and her brother Luke Flood suggested that she involve a charity for the day.

She then crossed paths with now three-year-old Roxy Vankuyk and the Roxy Rockin’ It fundraiser came to life.

When Roxy was two-years-old she was diagnosed with a very rare genetic condition that affects the ATP8A2 gene, so rare in fact that she is one of only 12 people diagnosed with the condition worldwide.

Roxy’s diagnosis is the first of its kind in Australia and the chances of being born with this rare genetic abnormality is 1 in 500 million.

“We started to realise there was something a bit of amiss when she was about six-months-old,” Roxy’s mother Lyndal Vankuyk said.

“We took her to Sydney and they did lots of tests and we couldn’t work out what it was.

“We ended up getting a whole genetic testing done and we found out she had a condition affecting the ATP8A2 gene.

“We are pumped and a bit nervous for Saturday,” she added.

“We are super excited and a bit overwhelmed about how much support we have been given, we weren’t really expecting it to be as big as it is.

“Bec and Luke have done a phenomenal job.”

The Roxy Rockin’ It fundraiser has been well-supported from the beginning, and the golfing community in particular has gotten right behind the event.

Spots in the golf match began to fill up fast after it was announced last year and before the New Year had even arrived all team allocations were exhausted.

There will be 72 teams playing on the day which amounts to 216 golfers.

Narrabri Golf Club’s Wade Foster told The Courier that it would be the biggest golf event that the club had ever hosted.

Adding to the excitement of the ambrose is the possibility of playing alongside Artis and several other
professional sports people.

A celebrity player auction will be held before the game where teams can bid for a handful of familiar faces to play alongside them.

One of those is Artis’ close friend, World Golf Hall of Fame inductee Dame Laura Davies.

Davies has supported the Australian summer of golf across four different decades, and in 2020 she is celebrating her 35th visit to Australia.

Other celebrity players available in that auction include Artis, Australian professional golfer and Narrabri’s very own Matt Stieger, Narrabri’s 2020 Australia Day ambassador and former Australian international cricketer Len Pascoe and possibly former South Sydney Rabbitohs NRL grand final winner Kyle Turner.

Off the course an action-packed afternoon and evening has been planned and a massive crowd is expected.

Fire and Rescue NSW Narrabri will bring trucks along and the Narrabri Police will have cars on show for the kids to enjoy.

There will also be a jumping castle, face painting and other kids’ activities.

Raffles, a major auction and a silent auction will also be held with some brilliant prizes on offer.

There will be live music at the event with the Three Legged Pig Dogs performing from 3-5pm and West and Public coming on about 7pm and playing into the night.

Artis said that she was grateful for the amount of support the event had received so far.

“I’m absolutely surprised,” she said.

“Especially in such a hard time, we’re in the middle of a pretty tough drought.

“The local people have just been amazing, we haven’t really had to go out, we just put it out there that we were doing a charity golf day for Roxy and a lot of people have come to us.

“I hope that people come along and have a good day out and show their support. The golf is obviously full but we have the family fun day starting at 3pm.”