David Wittner attending his last game in circa 2018
History of The Wittner Plate
By Philip Endersbee
This tournament originated when a group of Rotary Melbourne golfers just wanted a break for a couple of days during the week to play golf.
Back then we were all still working but it was just good to get away.
We would venture down to Barwon Heads, plays 18 holes in the afternoon, stay overnight at the Clubhouse, have a slap up dinner, play 18 holes the next morning and then come home.
The last time David Wittner played with us before his passing he had won the plate for the lowest score off the stick!!
So in the days when the Windsor was to close for refurbishing and David Perry (GM of the Windsor) was a member we managed to get 3 pieces of Windsor dining room crockery as trophies for our golf.
On the particular day that David won, I had picked him up from his home & after golf drove him back home.
When David loaded his clubs into the back of my station wagon, for some reason he had put the clubs on or next to the trophy plate and when he pulled his clubs out of the car the plate came with his bag and smashed on the concrete floor in his garage.
David then said : “oh gee what are we going to do now? There are no more plates and this is in a dozen bits. Do you think we could glue it together but I could not do that so would you have a go?”.
I (Phil) went off to Bunnings for some porcelain glue and the result is that today, in memory of David, we now compete for that same trophy but we call it the “Wittner Plate”.
Graham Whitelaw joined this years group and cleaned up with winner on strokes, handicap & stableford. Yes an outright winner!!
Winner Graham Whitelaw
