It is a prestigious recognition: Barton has been such a huge figure in international waterskiing that he has long been referred to by serious skiers as "the Godfather".

I'll never forget the first time I saw Garry Barton in action. For context: it was the '60s, and a group of us used to go skiing at Morpeth. There was a little area by the river there that, despite it not really being all that sandy, we called "the beach".

The beach was where we'd all hang around, mums and dads and kids, on picnic blankets and whatever. You'd get in the water from the beach and that was where the boat would drop you to wade ashore after you'd had your go on the planks.

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On this day we were sitting there when somebody said, "look out!" and we looked up to see one of our number, Donny Way, coming in, as they say, "a little hot".

"I'd imagined," Donny explained later, "myself gliding gracefully up the bank and then just stepping casually out of the skis... I could see it in my mind," he said.

What happened, of course, was that the skis stopped dead when they hit dirt and Donny sailed over us, like superman, ending up in the bush behind.

This being the nature of things you can imagine how it looked when, shortly afterwards, some bloke clad only in board shorts grabbed hold of a rope attached to a big chugging boat and started running down the beach. The boat took off, flat-out, as he dived in on his back and away they went.

He turned around and stood up; barefooting. I couldn't believe it. I thought, my God, what's this?

It was Garry Barton.

"Barto" had been a champion cyclist who went skiing one day with friends because it was raining and he didn't much fancy going out on the bike. He wasn't all that impressed with the skiing but then as they were coming home he saw some guys on the corner of the river at Seaham barefooting and doing tricks. He thought that that looked like fun and decided he'd have a crack.

A few short years later Barto would set the world barefoot speed record at Berkeley Aquatic Park in San Francisco at 77.77mph. (He'd been approaching 90mph when the rope broke. They then had to tie the rope together for his record setting run ... hey, it was the '70s).

Barto was World Barefoot Champion for four years running - 1969,70,71,72 - and, as well as setting world records in speed and endurance, developed indescribably influential new approaches to tricks and equipment.

He performed the first ever backwards deepwater start and his wetsuit innovations are still used to this day. He told me that when he started out he you used to ski in "normal shorts with a thong down the back to keep the water out". A lot of skiers appreciate how deeply indebted they are ...

It's been a colourful career. He has met the Queen (with both Philip and Charles professing to be avid skiers) and Sean Connery. He was, for a while, very famous in Canada having filmed an ad for Timex that received extremely high rotation: Barto performed tricks for the camera with a watch strapped to his foot. Alan Grice drove the boat.

He made it all look so easy. So easy, in fact, that I decided once I'd give it a go myself. Barto was there, skiing beside me when I made the attempt. You need to be going at least 40mph in order to barefoot and so I suppose we must've been going at a clip somewhere north of that when I chose to step off the ski I'd been travelling on and pursue the finer art. I realised very early on in the piece that I was in trouble; it wasn't going to work, and then I made the mugs' error of deciding that my best option would be to run ... My face hit the water so hard I split my eyelids.

It is worth pointing out that in the golden era of Maitland sport - the '60s and '70s, when we couldn't seem to help but dominate in pretty much everything - it was Garry Barton who received the Maitland Mercury's "Sportsman of the Decade" award. He really is a cut above.

He's also a mad golfer and has lived across the road from the 8th for a quarter of a century. The holes each have a name at Maitland, and - my two cents - I reckon Barto, a daily golfer and one of the very, very few sportspeople who have been the best in the world, should maybe have one of those holes named for him.

Making the 8th "Barto" would be the obvious choice, but for the fact that the 8th is currently called "Posinatus" after Maitland's 1913 Melbourne Cup winner who trained on the track that runs through the course. There's too much lovely history there to change that.

The 10th, however, is called "the Creek", which provides a water reference that could possibly be appropriated. And then there's the 17th, which is "the Twins", named for the two tall trees in front of the green. Those trees are no longer there.

What I'm getting at is that there are hole naming opportunities and I reckon the club should seriously consider giving Barto a hole in his name.

Anyway, my congratulations go today to Garry Barton: a champion; a superb bloke and a great mate.