In 1946, the Committee of Yarra Yarra Golf Club decided to invite 13 fellow VGA Clubs to play in the Yarra Yarra Invitation Cup.
Each Club was asked to send two representatives who were to be paired with two Yarra Yarra members. Only the invited Clubs are eligible to win the Invitation Cup, with the Yarra Yarra pairs acting as hosts for the day.
The Clubs originally invited were Commonwealth, Geelong, Kew, Kingston Heath, Metropolitan, Northern, Riversdale, Royal Melbourne, Victoria, Woodlands, Huntingdale, Heidelberg and Kingswood.
An important aspect of the invitation was to create a friendly interchange between the ordinary members of the various clubs with a view to maintaining old ties and developing goodwill.
Along the way, the VGA, now Golf Victoria, have also been invited to field a team, and Geelong Golf Club no longer participates, as it has been disbanded.
The first event was played on 26th October, 1946 and was won by Woodlands. Since then, all of the invited clubs have won the Neil Duncan Invitation Cup at least once, with Huntingdale the clear leader with 13 wins.
In 1953, Yarra Yarra decided to nominate one of its pairs to officially represent our Club and to compete for the Cup. Indeed, with the home course advantage, Yarra Yarra won it that year, so the practice of Yarra Yarra competing was immediately discontinued, and the Yarra Yarra members reverted to their traditional role as hosts.
Neil Duncan was a member of the Committee of Yarra Yarra from 1950 to 1952 and Captain in 1953 and 1954. He was a tireless worker for Yarra Yarra. He was a strong advocate of the Invitation Cup. After his death in 1963, the Committee changed the name of the Yarra Yarra Invitation Cup to the Neil Duncan Yarra Yarra Invitation Cup, in recognition of his contribution to the Club.
This year saw the 71st hosting of the Neil Duncan Yarra Yarra Invitational Cup.
The event was played on Saturday 19 March. On a day that was reasonably tough for scoring, the Cup was won by Michael Church and Peter Hastie from Northern Golf Club with a score of plus 5.
As always, the competition was held in good spirit, and continued to foster the relationships that exist between all the competing clubs.