Victorian Golfers: Vote Daniel Andrews!

Daniel Andrews is the current leader of the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party and Leader of the Opposition in that state, is running to run the place. According to Wikipedia, "Victoria has compulsory voting and uses preferential ballot in single-member seats for the Legislative Assembly, and single transferable vote in multi-member seats for the proportionally represented Legislative Council."

Way above my pay grade, whatever that all means. However, as Ben Hills notes in a profile of Andrews for The Age, the man has his priorities straight. He loves golf and golf architecture.

He claims to be a "golf tragic" and, if anything, this is a massive understatement. He is obsessed and plays every spare minute, even if it's just thumping a few balls at the driving range late at night. And although, with the demands of the campaign, his handicap has slipped from six to a still-respectable 10, he confesses if he wasn't a politician, the job he would most like would be that of Stephen Pitt, the chief executive of Golf Australia.

On his bedside table the day I visit his home are a well-thumbed copy of Charles Macdonald's classic Scotland's Gift: Golf, and Geoff Shackelford's biography of the legendary golf-course architect George Thomas, The Captain. If that's not enough excitement, for light relief there's the fourth volume of Robert Caro's monumental biography of former US president Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Passage of Power.

I've always said, my books make great bedside reading! Better and safer than Ambien.

More importantly, if we are going to start talking about a PGA Championship going overseas in 2020 to avoid the Olympic calendar mess, it sounds like Victoria needs a man like Andrews on its side when the Americans come calling with a major!