Brian Gainey joined Liphook Golf Club as a full member in 1980; it is the only UK club to which he has been affiliated. He started playing competitive golf in 1976 off a handicap of 12 at Torrey Pines Golf Club where the US Open will be played later this year. Torrey Pines is a public course run by San Diego County where local residents and corporations can play at a discount. Brian was with a Corporate Society, 200 golfers strong, that played league 9-hole competitions twice a week in 6-man teams, league matches for the company against other local companies and monthly meetings as a society at nearby private golf courses in the San Diego area. Once a year, popular long weekend golf trips to Las Vegas and Palm Springs were undertaken. Brian became Chairman of this group of golfers in 1978 and, together with a Treasurer, Secretary, President and Handicap Secretary, organised all the golfing affairs for the Company. Note that there was no Captain!

Brian worked for 30 years for the Royal Dutch Shell Group, both in the UK and abroad in roughly equal amounts, mostly as a technical/commercial manager. He also worked for five years for a global international energy consultancy called Gaffney-Cline and Associates. He studied at Bristol University and undertook research and teaching duties at the University of California at Los Angeles. Brian has a PhD in Chemistry and is a Chartered Chemist and Engineer. He was formerly a reasonable cricket, soccer and table tennis player, qualified soccer coach and referee and sub-aqua diver. He lives at Hillbrow close to the golf course and has three grown-up children and wife Valerie all of whom have from time to time swung a golf club without becoming addicted as he is. He plays off a handicap of 14 and organises the Tenth Tee Mob who have been in existence for about fifty years and play at Liphook on Sunday mornings from the tenth tee. He has occasionally managed and played in Liphook club matches and is in his fourth year as an Elders Match Manager.
 

John was born, and went to school, in Stockton-on-Tees. As his father worked for ICI in Billingham, it was not entirely surprising that he should read Chemical Engineering at Leeds University and make a career in the many aspects of industrial, technical and commercial management.
 
Like many in the late ‘50s, he worked in the long vacations, first at Mobil's oil refinery in Naples and later at Secil's cement factory in Lisbon. His first job after graduating was with Head, Wrightson in their research and development laboratory in Stockton-on-Tees at the heavy engineering end of the nuclear fuel industry. A bit of a comedown after Naples and Lisbon, you might think. Not at all, this was where he met Ann, his wife to be.
 
In the early 60's John had a brief, but agreeable, spell in London in an office in the shadow of Harrods but in 1964 he was back in Stockton-on-Tees working for the heavy organic chemicals division of ICI. In 1982 he was back again in London, this time with the oil and gas business of ICI in Millbank. In 1983 he moved with his family to Haslemere where he has happily taken root.
 
ICI decided to dispense with its oil and gas interests and John was involved from '85 to '87 in their merger with Enterprise Oil where he himself went in '87. Following the discovery of three oil fields in the Southern Apennines, he was transferred to Rome in '95 for two idyllic years.  He retired in January '97 and left the Board of the Italian Company on his return to the UK 6 months later.
 
John joined Liphook in 1984 with a handicap of 11. His father had introduced him to golf when he was a teenager and they played at Eaglecliffe GC. More sensibly than many others, he managed to keep playing during his working life and his handicap has now crept up to 14. When he joined Liphook, the membership was predominantly ex-Services and Colonial but John was made very welcome and feels that the atmosphere was as friendly then as it is now. His name appears in several places on the winners' boards in the Clubhouse but he has also made a major contribution to the Club in other ways. He served on the Committee from '93 but had to stand down from the Committee in '95 when he was posted to Rome.
John was elected to the Committee again in 2001. For the first three years he was responsible for Property/House and was heavily involved with the development of the ‘Way Ahead' study initiated by John Harvey. This led to him being responsible for the construction of the Staff Room and to the extension and refurbishment of the kitchen.
In 2004, just when there appeared to be a natural break in this activity, the Captain - Roderick More - asked John to look after the Membership and Communications Sub-Committee. With membership becoming a major issue and with the launch of the Club website there were plenty of issues to occupy his waking hours – so much so that his golf was reduced to twice a week.

John has been Match Manager for Elders matches against a few different Clubs since 1999, most recently for the matches against Wentworth and Walton Heath. He reckons that these events are amongst the best features of the Club and, in common with many others, can hardly believe his good luck at what the Club provides.
 
John and Ann still live in Haslemere. In 2006, John joined the Board of ‘Hoppa’ – Waverley’s community transport company and Ann does voluntary work for Cancer Research UK. Their son, Miles, works as an editorial director with a major publishing organisation in Hebden Bridge and has two children. Their daughter, Melissa, and her husband both work in Basle and have two young daughters. Keeping in touch with the family requires a fair amount of travel that he somehow manages to fit in with his other interests.