Way back in 1978 Tony Gresham played a Victorian - for the third time in six years - in the final of the Australian Amateur Championship.

He’d lost in 1973 at Lake Karrinyup to Ray Jenner, in 1976 to Peter Sweeney at New South Wales and at Royal Queensland he and I played off for the most important amateur championship in the country.

"Gresh" was the overwhelming favourite in all three matches and in 1978 the Sydney man was the defending champion having beaten the 1975 champion Chris Bonython in perhaps the greatest-ever Australian Amateur final at the 40th hole at Victoria Golf Club.

I won our match on the 36th hole, but it’s not really the point of the story. Rather it was a moment in time when the state of top-level amateur golf fundamentally changed.

Of course neither of us knew it at the time, but no longer would life-long amateurs, including Bonython, Sweeney, Colin Kaye, Phil Wood and Kevin Hartley, dominate the upper reaches of amateur golf.

“He was better than all of us” said Wood of Gresham’s game.

First played in 1894, the earliest champion to turn pro was Jim Ferrier, the winner in 1935,1936, 1938 and 1939. Bruce Devlin won in 1959, Bill Britten in 1966, Bob Shearer in 1969 and Terry Gale in 1974 but that was it when it came to amateur champions trying their luck on the professional tour.

It would also be remiss of me not to mention Harry Berwick who turned pro as a senior golfer and is best known for winning the 1956 New Zealand Open, earning him an invitation to the US Masters. He declined because he couldn’t afford the expense of the trip and was too embarrassed to ask for help.

Since 1978, every single winner tried his luck on the professional tour, making Gresham’s generation the last of the "career" amateur players who had jobs, slept in their own beds most nights, had what most would recognise as normal lives, and played seriously as amateurs.

Gresham was clearly the finest amateur of his generation and his golf season included playing the big state opens in South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria, the Australian Amateur and Interstate Teams matches, his own state’s amateur championship and the Australian Open.

Gresh was an automatic selection in the biennial Eisenhower Cup team for more than a decade and in 1972 beat Ben Crenshaw in Buenos Aires for the individual title. Crenshaw was, at the time, the best amateur in the world.

His most significant wins were the 1975 New South Wales Open when he beat Billy Dunk and David Graham and the 1978 South Australian Open when Bonython was second and Rodger Davis, the grateful leading pro, who took home the first prizemoney.

A year later, he missed the playoff between Davis, Gary Player and Geoff Parslow in the Victorian Open by a shot after shooting an 81 on the first day.

Eisenhower Cup teams aside, Gresham rarely played outside of Australia but in 1979 he lost the semi-final of the British Amateur to Scott Hoch (who lost the final to Jay Sigel) and a year later he beat John Kelly, the 1979 Australian Amateur champion, in the final of the French Amateur at Chantilly.

"Gresh" was a terrific player with the most ordered of games and despite always denying he worked hard at the game he worked hard at the game. Wayne Grady and I played a practice round with him in Japan in the late 70s and he’d spent the hour-long bus trip out to the course insisting he’d been in the office and had spent no time on the practice fairway.

It took one drive to prove that wasn’t true. The first fairway was narrow with trouble everywhere and the wind was howling off the left. In the days of persimmon drivers and balata balls it was anything but a routine drive and I can still see Gresh’s ball piercing the wind without deviating a foot off its starting line. We just laughed.

It’s unlikely we’ll see the likes of Gresham again but his "career" in golf was hugely successful and for our generation coming behind it was a proper measure of your progress if you could stay with him on the course.