90 Minutes of Burridge

Kristian Hewitt's Park Scratchings

Kristian Hewitt (number 4 in yellow) during a 3-0 defeat against Burridge Sports in September '05.

Kristian agreed that it would only take a single blow to the head with a shovel, or even a house brick, to kill the seagull. He brought the John Deere Gator to a halt on the driving range when his passenger, Luke Sanderson, noticed something slowly circling the grass in a nearby ditch over the road from the landfill site. On closer inspection they saw it was a seagull. It had a dark crimson hole where its wing used to be. Kristian looked over his shoulder at the shovel's squared off steel head laid out in the trailer and winced at the thought of bringing it down over his head with the force necessary to soak the grass beneath it a violent shade of red. With neither having the stomach for it they drove away up the fairway.

The cleaners have long since given up on the toilets in the mess room, so any green keeper at East Horton Golf Course struggling to contain the contents of his gut would do well to seek comfort of the white seated toilets of the clubhouse. During the winter months it gets too cold for Kristian to take off his quilted body warmer in the mess room, which after a few hours spent cutting greens is where he'd go for a tea break around about 9am. You'd normally find him sat on a plastic backed chair flicking through the pages of Nuts. Pictures of women are stuck to the painted white brick walls by rolled up balls of Blu-Tack. Some of them are so focused on getting your attention that they've forgotten to put on clothes.

Four years ago he turned towards the back of the Echo looking for the Park Scratchings feature on the Burridge derby game. Scanning the report with an index finger he found the familiar arrangement of letters that made up his name. “Match highlight,” he said, reading it out like a question. “Kristian Hewitt's 25-yarder, which left his right foot like a missile and was only stopped from finding the top corner by the goalkeeper's outstretched hand.” Older brother and head green keeper, Marcus, wasn't so easily impressed. Missiles didn't get saved by fat blokes who only play in goal because they can't run around. Kristian returned to the newspaper. He was man of the match in a 3-2 win over Burridge Sports. It said so on the pages in front of him and he enjoyed the satisfaction that it brought him, even though that he knew the credibility of being named so would always be called into question if the newspaper were prepared to report in the same feature that Paul Dyke was the club jester and Jay Schwodler was Burridge's best man marker.


This winter's weather's as wet as Kristian has known it in ten years spent cutting greens. There's much more chance of a stick in right now. You'll be out on the fourteenth on the rough cutter and suddenly your wheels will start sinking into the earth. Hitting the gas pedal will just drive your wheels deeper into the mud, so you have to get out and walk for help. Sometimes for fifteen minutes. You'll probably need the Bobcat to pull you out with a tethered chain. The question is how come Kristian hasn't had any stick ins himself this season? Like some wily old sailor he said, “I know all the bad spots.”