At the 2023 Annual General Meeting held on Saturday 17th June, the Committee recommended that members Michael Jay and Joan Lyons be elected as Honorary Life Members under Rule 7.1.1. David Cherry and Anne Arnfield spoke from the floor in support of Michael and Joan respectively and both were elected with an overwhelming show of support from voting members present.
As can be seen from the profiles below, Michael and Joan have made strong contributions to Royal Adelaide and amateur golf as a whole and are deserving recipients of Honorary Life Membership.
We congratulate Michael and Joan on this fantastic honour.
MICHAEL JAY
Michael Jay has been a member of the Royal Adelaide Golf Club for 62 years and served on the Committee from 2004 to 2010.
In that time, he was Chair of the Activities Sub-Committee from 2004 to 2006, Chair of the Match and Pennant Sub-Committee from 2006 to 2008 and Chair of the Membership and Rules Sub-Committee from 2008 to 2010.
In 2010, Michael became Vice Captain and chair of the Course Sub-Committee.
He served as Captain of the Club from 2012 to 2014.
During his tenure as Captain, the Junior Development Sub-Committee was established, and in 2015 Michael commenced as Chair of this Sub-Committee, a position he has held since. In that time, Michael has devoted countless hours to the development of junior golf at Royal Adelaide and fostering our Junior membership to the point where we now have approximately 100 Junior members with an extremely strong junior development program. In addition, Michael supports the Junior members as team manager of the Sharp Cup, Junior Division 2 and McMillan Shield teams.
Michael has been team manager of our senior interclub/match play team for many years.
Michael became Vice-President in 2020 and was elected as President in 2023.
Michael is the current Captain and a Director of the Senior Golfers Society of Australia.
It was a big week for Michael who was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the General Division, as part of the King’s Birthday Honours for significant service to otolaryngology, to head and neck surgery, and to professional bodies.
JOAN LYONS
Joan Lyons has been a member of the Royal Adelaide Golf Club for 60 years.
Joan has been a significant contributor and given great service to Royal Adelaide over many years.
Joan was a member of the Associates Committee from 1982 to 1991 serving as the Associates Captain from 1988 to 1989 and the Associates President from 1990 to 1991.
Joan is a Custodian of the recently established Royal Adelaide Golf Club Foundation.
In addition to Joan’s significant contribution to Royal Adelaide she has made an enormous contribution to women’s amateur golf outside of the Club.
Joan became involved with the South Australian Ladies Golf Union in 1993 (that body became Women’s Golf South Australia in 1996) and Joan served on the Junior Advancement Committee from 1993 to 2001.
From 1997 to 2000 Joan served on the Match Committee, and on the Selection Committee from 2002 to 2004.
Joan become an Executive Councillor on the Women’s Golf South Australia council, was Vice President of Women’s Golf South Australia from 1996 to 1997 and again from 1999 to 2001 and was President of Women’s Golf South Australia from 2002 to 2004.
Joan was the South Australian delegate to the Women’s Golf Australia board from 1999 to 2001 and served on the board itself from 2002 to 2004.