Disappointing Rose Bowl Result

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30146, 1 June 1963, Page 9

Disappointing Rose Bowl Result

INTENSIVE match play by the province's six top golfers in the six weeks preceding the Freyberg Rose Bowl tournament is a scheme which may commend itself to the Canter-, bury Provincial Golf Association in view of the dismal performance of the representative team in the 1963 contest at the Hutt course last week. , From its excellent win at Dunedin last year, Canterbury plunged to ninth place in a 12-team field, a result rivalled only for a piace in obscurity by Canterbury’s ninth-equal plac-

( ing in a field of 13 at Shir--5 ley 10 years ago. s The Hutt debacle, at first ; sight, is hard to understand, i The Canterbury side con- - tamed four of the previous .. year’s winning combina- . tion and the No. 5 player, • C. W. Caldwell, had proved > a success in each of his five • Freyberg tournaments. t Some of those who watched the tournament be- . lieve that the course was too easy. It allowed players ’ of moderate calibre to foot i it with the best in the ! country, because loose shots were not penalised. There may be something in this theory, when it is remembered that top players such

as S. G. Jones and R. R. Newdick were almost beaten by far lesser golfers. The scoring was certainly good. One of the Canterbury players, R. E. Clements, had one of his least successful tournaments, although, in six match rounds and three preliminary rounds, he was only five over scratch, in the aggregate, for 162 holes. In one of his matches, he wa# two under scratch after 11 holes—and two down. It could well be that Canterbury’s performance would have been improved greatly had the players been systematically pitted

against each other in the period immediately preceding the tournament. Compulsory tournaments are all very well, but they do not provide the sharpening of a player’s game, so necessary before entering the hurly-burly of Rose Bowl match play.

Canterbury players, it is true, have the South Island inter-provincial tourney to assist them. But coming as it does almost three months before the Freyberg contest, its benefits are largely wasted.

It may therefore behove the Canterbury association to look closely at the merits of “cut-throat” competition among its top players as a means of restoring Canterbury to its former place among the provincial sides. Although he experienced his poorest Freyberg tournament as a Canterbury representative, R. C. Murray has still the greatest percentage of successful matches by a provincial player. He has won 20 and lost six—three of them at Hutt—for a return of 76.92 per cent. K. D. Foxton, C. W. Caldwell, I. S. Harvey and R. E. Clements all figure prominently among the Canterbury Rose Bowl aggregates and averages, although only Caldwell excelled in the latest contest. Clements now shares with Murray the distinction of playing in more than ‘5O Freyberg matches. His total is 54, compared with Murray’s 60—30 each for Canterbury and Otago. Canterbury’s most successful players in Rose Bowl tournaments (qualification: three contests) are:—

W. L. H. % R. C. Murray 20 8 4 78 92 E. G. Kerr .. 11 4 3 7333 R. J. Charles 13 5 72 22 M. W. Stanley 28 13 4 68.42 K. D. Foxton 29 14 5 87.44 C. W. Caldwell 21 11 4 63 62 I. S. Harvey .. 13 9 2 5909 A. W. Robinson 10 7 I 38.82 R. E. Clements 27 22 5 55.11 R. D. Kearns .. 9 • 1 52.94