One of Britain's oldest amateur golfers has celebrated sinking his first ever hole-in-one – the day after his 90th birthday. John Payne has been playing golf for 30 years and struck his perfect shot on the sixth hole of Brailsford Golf Course, near Ashbourne, Derbys.
00:00John Payne, we're from a local city Derby. I've been playing about 30 years because as you get
00:11older and your working life's coming to an end, you need something to do. People have
00:21different things yet now, but I played golf, took up golf and played all over England, Portugal,
00:28Spain, played with all sorts of very good golfers and some very poor ones of course, they're not all good.
00:35Lots of people here have done a lot of things in their lives, you know, we've obviously got
00:42engineers, we've got doctors, we've got all sorts of financial people and the thing about here is
00:53the most popular people in this club are the doctors and the surgeons because they get asked a lot of
01:01questions and they don't give you a bill, so that's a bonus. When I was 60-ish, coming to the end of my
01:12sort of working life and not retiring into a shell, you've just got to do something and a lot of old
01:20people come and play golf. And I play golf, still. Everybody in their life needs to exercise. I mean,
01:30I spend a bit of time at the gym as well as here. And the important thing about as you get older,
01:36your joints are the most important thing on your body, you know, apart from the tunnels, but you need to,
01:44you need to use your joints, you need to be supple, you've got to keep turning. Hole six, nice day, playing with two of my friends. And what I hit off the tee, I hit a driver off the tee.
02:00And there's a bunker in front of the green. And by sheer accident, it got over the bunker and hit the downslope, which kicked it on. And it just travelled and travelled and travelled. And my friend said,
02:18it's going in the hole. And it did.
02:24It's just something in your life. It's not feeling, it's not elation. I've done a lot of really nice things in my life. And this has come right at the end.
02:33Golf's golf. Golf is what it is. It's a challenge. And when you hit the ball, nobody hits it back at you. You make it in.
02:42Because golf is a very simple game. You hit a small ball with a stick across a field into another small hole at the other side of the field. And basically, that's what it is.
02:57But of course, it's sunny when you come out. Sometimes it's raining. Often, it's not sometimes, it's snowy, frosty.
03:09It's a challenge because there are trees on here. There are hedges. There are all sorts of holes with sand in them.
