“I couldn’t think of anything worse than hitting a little ball around corners,” she said. “Even when I first went out to have a swing I came back thinking ‘what a stupid game’.”

That was more than 40 years ago and since that time Lorna has won an astonishing 98 championships on a golf course.

She had considered giving the game away at the start of this year but was talked around by good friend and former Gloucester Golf Club greenkeeper Brian Osborne.

Instead, she intends to crack the century and even then it is unlikely her appetite for winning will be fully sated.

A champion tennis player in her youth, Lorna did not start playing golf until 1970.

It was good friend Peggy Griffin who encouraged her to stick with the sport despite her initial misgivings.

“Peggy was the one who kept encouraging me to go out for a hit after tennis was finished,” Lorna said. “I remember I used to get frustrated and joke about what a silly game it was, but Peggy would turn to me and tell me that golf was a serious sport.

“I’d play tennis twice a week and then I started playing golf once a week as well. Pretty soon tennis was down to once a week and then I stopped playing it all together and golf took over.”

Lorna showed some natural ability for the sport, but it was sheer hard work that helped her win her first championship – and the many since.

“I started reading books and buying clubs and gear and practicing all the time. I’d practice chipping into an umbrella, near a glass window, anywhere and everywhere,” she said.

“I used to practice my chipping with Mary Carroll who was off a 12 mark and I remember saying to her ‘all I want is to one day be as good as you Mary’.

“She turned to me and said ‘Lorna, you’re going to be a lot better golfer than I’ll ever be.”

Lorna won her first championship at the Gloucester club in 1971 and soon after started travelling to compete in various tournaments, mostly in the Upper Hunter and on the Mid-North Coast.

She is a multiple champion at both the Gloucester club and Muree Golf Club in Raymond Terrace, but there are a few victories that she looks back on especially fondly.

“I’ve won the Lower North Coast foursomes and mixed foursomes championships, but to me the Central North Coast champion of champions title\ which I won in 1978 is hard to beat,” she said. “That was up against the club champions from all the clubs in the district so to win it was pretty special.”

Lorna was named the Gloucester Shire’s Sportsperson of the Year in 1982-83 – she has also scored a hole-in-one, though only once, in 2008.

While golf has remained her main vice, she also is a passionate horse rider and is keen to start playing social tennis again.

She has attributed her success in golf and life to her father, who was also a passionate sportsman.

“My father was a champion tennis player and he taught my siblings and I how to win but he also taught us how to lose,” she said. “He used to say to us ‘there is no such thing as can’t – you can try’.”