A Note From The Editor - April 4
For months, The Age has been writing about the issues and inadequacies of Victoria Police investigating its own members over complaints. And these stories have gained plenty of traction.
But sometimes it takes something extraordinary to really ram home how important issues like these are. We got that this week from a Nick McKenzie investigation that included a video showing police dragging a mentally ill man from his home before brutally beating and humiliating him, and another showing a Sudanese-born youth being bashed after he robbed a chemist.
The videos led all the TV news bulletins and were viewed more than 500,000 times across the Fairfax network. The comments from readers were almost unanimous in their outrage.
It is hard to see how change won't result from these stories, but it will require more than just talk about culture reform and a reliance on the new body cameras to increase transparency and accountability.
DRIVE AND DETERMINATION
Given the hammering that a win-at-all-costs mentality has received recently, I thought it might be worth recounting a tale of human effort, determination and endeavour that is more uplifting. (Full disclosure: I am a golf fan, and the US Masters, which starts this week, is my favourite event of the year. It's so good that Sam Newman has given up his ''dream'' of becoming Melbourne lord mayor to attend!)
Almost three decades ago, a teenage golfer named Ian Poulter approached the owner of a driving range to ask if he could use it for free for a year because he was going to turn professional and needed to practise.
The owner, a man named Stephen Proctor and a good friend of my dad, asked him his golf handicap, which was 10. Most would-be professionals are much better players than that as teenagers, and Proctor told Poulter he didn’t fancy his chances of turning pro.
"Attitude always trumps talent, and Poulter was there, every day, hour after hour, honing his game.''
But Poulter was so determined and genuine that he persuaded Proctor to let him use the range for free. Attitude always trumps talent, and Poulter was there, every day, hour after hour, honing his game.
Sure enough, he eventually turned pro. He has so far won 20 tournaments worldwide and has been as high as No.5 in the world. Now 42, he has never forgotten Proctor's generosity and has regularly kept in touch.
Which may not sound much, but famous people are often somewhat self-obsessed. I once played 18 holes with Dennis Waterman, who was very entertaining when talking about The Sweeney, Minder, George Cole and his three (now four) wives, but didn't once ask me a question in four hours.
Poulter's form has been sketchy recently and he needed to reach at least the semi-finals of the world match-play championship a fortnight ago to scrape into the world's top 50 players, who secure an automatic invitation to the Masters.
After he had made it through to the quarter-finals, he was told other results had fallen his way and he'd actually done enough to qualify for Augusta.
He was elated, until 10 minutes before his match, when he was told that wasn't the case and he needed to win. He didn't and his bid to play in the Masters appeared over.
But in a last-ditch effort to qualify, he entered a tournament he hadn't intended to play in, the Houston Open, the winner of which is the last person to earn a start at the first major championship of the year.
Poulter had not won a tournament for six years, had never won a stroke-play event in America and started poorly to be 123rd after the first round. But he steamed through the field over the next three days and, incredibly, won a play-off to win the title. Winning after being 123rd after the first round was the biggest comeback on the US Tour for 35 years.
I had the privilege of covering the Masters in 2015, and we have Adam Pengilly there for us this week.
This year's event is as anticipated as any in recent memory, with virtually all of the world's top players in form and Tiger Woods back to somewhere near his best.
And I'll also be keeping an eye on Ian Poulter. He's easy to spot - he's the one wearing the most outrageous golf pants.
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