Party off for UK hit

By Paul Pickering
BOYS’ trips don’t get any better than this: a dozen mates golfing and drinking their way around the UK.
What began as a 21st anniversary bash for a group of social golfers known as The Breakfast Club has grown into something else all together.
Club legend Bernie Gramc is calling it “the trip of a lifetime”, and with good reason.
The trip has special meaning for Gramc, who is battling a rare illness called scleroderma and believes it will soon claim his life.
“It could be my last hurrah,” Gramc, candid and upbeat, said last week.
“I’m very happy that I’ve made it this far and these lovely fellas are sticking with me.
“I’ve been given the all-clear from the specialist, we’re all paid up and we leave on the 15th (of July).”
That’s when the 12-man touring party jets out for Scotland, where they will attend the last two rounds of the 150th British Open at the historic home of golf, St Andrews.
From there the boys head across the channel to Ireland for 12 consecutive days of golf and “festivities”, before cheering on Aussie professionals – and friends of the Breakfast Club – Richard Green and Paul Sheehan in the Irish Open.
It’s an itinerary that would make most blokes green with envy. It’s also been almost a decade in the planning.
Gramc joined the Breakfast Club in 1990, two years after the group began.
Back then it was just a few mates gathering for a regular early-morning hit at Warragul. The club now has around 26 players on its books, with 16 fully-fledged members, plus a few “hanger-oners”, as Gramc affectionately calls them.
They play four major tournaments each year, with the overall winner receiving the John Whiteley Trophy, named in honour of one of the original Breakfast Club members who passed away in a car accident in 1994.
Along the way the club has acquired a team bus, which Gramc, who owns BMR Auto’s in Pakenham, services and maintains.
He was also the one who first suggested the club’s annual trip could be held offshore.
“A couple of the boys said, why don’t we go to the home of golf in Ireland?” Gramc recalled.
“And, after a few years of debating, about three or four years ago we were sitting around over a few beers very late of an evening, we decided to see who was fair dinkum and 12 or 13 fellas put their hands up.”
Breakfast Club chief executive Brian Paynter opened a joint bank account for the group in a bid to get the ball rolling, and the dream has now materialised.
Gramc can’t wait, but he admits that the thought of a dozen knockabout Aussies traipsing around the stuffy St Andrews’ Old Course could be a recipe for disaster.
“We’ll probably get marched out by security,” he joked.
Sounds like it should be a 21st birthday party to remember.