Golf gurus Steve and Donna farewell Narrabri

Steve Bishop and Donna Reeves have recently farewelled Narrabri after selling the western part of their business ‘The Mobile Golf Shop’.

At the end of June, Steve and Donna finished up at the Narrabri Golf Club where Steve has been the local golf pro and the couple has operated the pro shop since 2018.

They have sold part of the business to Murwillumbah Golf Driving Range pro Graham Trew and his partner Nicole Cooper, but will still operate The Mobile Golf Shop east of Inverell and will be based in both Glen Innes and their hometown Woolgoolga.

Graham and Nicole will assume their new role in the region from July 17.

Steve and Donna’s inspiration to launch The Mobile Golf Shop and to service the north west was a conversation with Wee Waa’s Carol Russell in 2017.

They met Carol at their former Coffs Harbour golf driving range business which she had visited to order trophies for Wee Waa Golf Club’s Wee Waa and District Pre-School annual golf day ambrose event that year.

Carol invited them to the event, an offer which they accepted, and it was during that trip they visited Narrabri Golf Club and spoke with Club Narrabri chief executive Paul Gordon about bringing their services to Narrabri.

As Steve says, “the rest is history”.

Now, after more than three years servicing Narrabri and surrounding towns, they agreed it was time to move on.

While still operating The Mobile Golf Shop east of Inverell across several towns, the couple look forward to spending more time in their caravan travelling the country.

Steve and Donna told The Courier they had cherished the memories and friendships they had created during their time in Narrabri.

“We’ve enjoyed our time here,” Steve said.

“The members have supported us, and we’ve loved coming out and visiting the country people and bringing them something they’d never had before.

“We always said we would try to leave the golf club in a better place than we found it and I do believe we’ve done that.

“There’s a lot of members who have been able to get new stock, current stock.

“We have more stock here than any other golf club nearby, you’d have to go to Gold Coast or Sydney.

“We’ve carried a huge range and all the little golf clubs have been beneficiaries of us being here too, clubs like Wee Waa, Coonabarabran, Bingara and Warialda.

“Narrabri has been a hub for our business.

“We signed a contract to come out here once a month but when we started to set the shop up and get everything ready, we soon realised that this place needed to be serviced more than once a month.

“We’d come out for a week, 10 days at a time, some weekends, we just came out whenever the club had an event on.

“But Narrabri is nearly to the stage now where it’s a full-time job.”

Steve and Donna said that Narrabri and the other golf clubs in the north/north western area were in good hands going forward.

“Graham is a very good teacher, he does a lot with Jack Newton Golf in schools,” Steve said.

“He currently teaches more than 1000 kids a year.

“He’ll be an asset to Narrabri Golf Club. He’ll be able to service the golfers in the district because we look after 14 clubs, and he’s only got six clubs to look after.

“We’ve left it in good hands with Graham and Nicole. They are only in their early 50s and they are very keen.”

“What Graham will be able to do that we couldn’t do would be to set up regular visits to schools,” Donna said.

“We could go into schools on behalf of Jack Newton Golf when we were in the area, whereas Graham, because he wants to base himself in this area, he’ll be able to set up programs.

“Fingers crossed it increases the number of juniors.”

Steve and Donna agreed that developing more junior golfers was one of the main challenges the sport needs to address, and that Narrabri was successfully doing so through the hard work of local junior coach Rob Butler.

“I’d really like to make a special mention to Rob Butler and what he’s done for this golf club,” Bishop said.

“The average age of a golfer in Australia now is between 68 and 75.

“Unless we get more juniors coming through there’ll be no more golf courses in 20 years.

“Rob Butler has done a fantastic job with the juniors, all in his own time, he doesn’t get paid for it.

“I believe that by selling our business to Graham Trew, he and Rob will make sure golf will stay strong in the north/north west region.”