Burtta Cheney: Still Going Strong
When talking about great women in the game of golf, how could one not mention Burtta Cheney? The woman is singularly responsible for changing the way people perceived the sport and women golfers specifically.
Cheney was 14 when she first stepped into the world of golf. The young girl had tried her hand at tennis and she was quite hopeless at it. She had never been good at school. Then one day she went with her mother to watch the Australian
Ladies Championships at the Commonwealth Golf Club and that is the where the world changed for her. It was in the car, on the way back that Cheney first talked about the desire to play. “I think I could do that – the ball stays there until you hit it” she
said to her mother.
It took a little bit of training and a whole lot of practice for her to become one of Victoria’s most talented and skilled golfers. She was a source of inspiration for many players and everyone who attended her sports camp in Anglesea
had one word to describe it “demanding!”
When Cheney was at the peak of her career, golf was just an amateur sport. As far as finances were concerned, she had to rely extensively on her father. Interestingly, her father was Sydney Albert Cheney; a famous car salesperson
and also the man responsible for first bringing the motor car assembly line to Australia.
Cheney won a number of prestigious golf tournaments in her days, including the Australian Championship of 1957. She went on to work in the golf administration at the club, state and national level. In 1976, she was awarded the
MBE. The golf veteran also has two junior golf tournaments named after her.
Today at the age of 93, Burtta still has the same passion burning in her about Women’s golf. Over the years, even though she has had more than her fair share of broken bones resulting from unlucky falls, she has made it a point
to go down to Victoria’s Fairways to watch the game she loves.
There was a time in her life when Cheney was afraid she would never get to play golf again. This was the period of the WW II when she was told to put her golfing days behind her and work for the Red Cross. “The golf clubs shut
down for years and then all of a sudden we realised the war was going to be over soon and the boys were going to come back and want a club. They came back and didn’t know how to play golf, and I had to show them how to do it.”
Although Burtta Cheney has contributed immensely to the game, hers remains the greatest story never told. However, this year due to the insistence of her family and friends, Burtta is finally willing to immortalise her life in
words for future generations to benefit from.
The task making this project possible has been undertaken by Gillian Ednie and her son Dan. Gillian is also one of the first students to have graduated from Miss Cheney’s golf camp. The process of recording Cheney’s life according
to them has been a very demanding, yet enjoyable task. They plan to carry out extensive interviews with the golfing fraternity to get a greater insight into her career and the impact she has had on the game.
That is what this biography aims to achieve. It aims to tell the story of a woman who was not only a champion golfer, but also an outstanding administrator and great junior promoter. Her entire career was dedicated to developing
women’s golf in Australia.
Burtta Cheney’s story is one of those rare stories that have the potential of being the source of great inspiration for all future generations. We wish the biographers all the best in their endeavour to make her story accessible
to all the people that stand to gain from her experiences.
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