CADDIE'S ROLE:Whenever you went to the club you could be sure you'd come across Larry

I HAD ALWAYS recognised the abbreviation LPG as a symbol for liquid petroleum gas. Back in the 1980s there were some progressive people looking for cheaper fuel opportunities and some of them drove cars on gas.

I once noticed in my golf club car park the LPG sign neatly and discreetly labelled on the back of an older member’s car, a white Alpha Sud, and had always assumed it signified how the car was fuelled. One inquisitive morning I peeked into the member’s boot and caught a glimpse of a big, cylindrical tank which, of course, held the liquid petroleum gas. But it was only then I made the connection that this LPG sign did not, as I had assumed, represent the fuel type of the car but rather the initials of its owner.

Laurence Pierce Gunning was the pillar of our golf club and he passed away quietly last week in his 92nd year. He was fit and active and very much part of the Royal Dublin club until the day he died. As a younger member of a golf club the chances were your contact with some of the senior members would have been a gruff encounter informing you that you couldn’t do such a thing at that time of the day.

Larry, with his white flat cap and standard golfing attire may well have looked like one of those characters, but in fact he was the opposite. He encouraged and included the younger members in all possible club activities.

I remember somehow fluking a hole-in-one in a junior competition on the old sixth hole with a five-iron (some details you will never forget). The news travelled fast and the next weekend I arrived at the club Larry presented me with a finished piece of marble with a tee and the ball mounted on it. Of course this made a deep impression on me.

Whenever you went to the club you could be sure at one stage you would come across Larry.

He was not hanging around there with nothing else to do, he was getting things done. He was active in team selection and back-up support. I recall being drafted in to caddie for away players in important Senior Cup competitions. He even suggested that I be appointed caddie to the President, Patrick Hillary, when he came to play in the club.

At club matches he would find a prominent position at a high, central point on the course and train his binoculars on as many matches as possible; he was affectionately known as “the Lark”.

Team members knew they were getting away with nothing that hadn’t been spotted through the field glasses of LPG: big brother was always watching you.

Larry joined Royal Dublin in 1935. Prior to this he had represented another club in a winning team, but was dropped on the unusual grounds that he was a teetotaller.

With 75 years of continuous membership he holds the record of being the longest-serving member in the club’s history.

A serving member he was. He represented the club on Junior and Senior Cup teams, he was a committee member, captain, vice president, a member of the Leinster Provincial Council and a trustee of the Royal Dublin club.

In the 1970s he was approached to manage one of the teams. His response was that he would manage all 13 teams if he could pick the players himself. In his first year as team manager the club won five trophies. Larry continued in the position for 20 years.

In his years travelling the country with club teams Larry introduced an important handicapping innovation which was adopted by the home unions representing clubs in Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales.

At the suggestion of his wife, Mary, LPG introduced a party for the widows of deceased members in 1979. It was the Gunnings’ idea to keep the women connected to the club through the annual social event.

Having lived through the evolution of the golf club for three-quarters of a century and having witnessed and been very much part of the changes to the club, there was not much that went on in the club without Larry’s stamp of approval.

At this year’s captain’s prize, the biggest golfing day for members, Larry stood on the first tee with his camera and took photographs of participants alongside the captain and Christy O’Connor, who saw most of the members off the first tee. The next week the photos were filed alphabetically in the locker room for collection.

Every golf club has probably got at least one member who devotes a huge part of their life to their club for the members’ benefit.

Larry Gunning was our rock at Royal Dublin. The one who personified, ask not what your club can do for you, rather what you can do for your club.

LPG has left an indelible mark of friendship and participation at Royal Dublin and made golfing and club life for all of us members more memorable. LPG, RIP.