Waikato Surprise Rose Bowl Leader

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31344, 14 April 1967, Page 15

Waikato Surprise Rose Bowl Leader

(From Our Own Reporter) DUNEDIN. Waikato, whose chances of success were written off after it had lost three leading players earlier this year, led the Freyberg Rose Bowl field at the end of the fourth round yesterday.

It was a bitterly cold day at St. Clair, and the golf was remarkably tight, half of the 14 matches being halved.

Waikato took advantage of this situation to score its third and fourth wins, and its leading player, G. C. Stevenson, capped the side’s display by beating the New Zealand champion, S. G. Jones (Hawke’s Bay). Auckland and Mid-Canter-bury each halved twice yesterday to share second place, one point behind Waikato. Canterbury, heavily beaten by Otago, slipped down the ladder, but found itself m good company—Wellington, the holder, and Otago are among the four teams with which it shares fourth place. TOP MEN BEATEN Some unexpected results from the leading matches contributed some colour to the grey, cheerless day. A. C. Relph, a 49-year-old veteran from Rotorua, beat J. D. Durry (Wellington) and, in the afternoon Durry overcame R. C. Murray (Otago) in an exciting match. The biggest upset, however, was Stevenson’s defeat of Jones, by 1 up. Stevenson, a bespectacled, 31-year-old accountant from the renowned wine-producing town of Te Kauwhata, will be remembered in Christchurch as the man who played K. D. Foxton in the famous match of the 1965 Rose Bowl series.

Rcently, he beat two New Zealand representatives, B. A. Stevens (Auckland) and T. S. Leech (Bay of Plenty), in match play at Rotorua and yesterday he continued his great run by giving Jones his second loss of the tournament

The national champion held the lead until the fifth hole and responded brilliantly to Stevenson’s challenge by sinking putts from the edge of the greens for halves at the eighth and ninth. JONES TWO DOWN It was only human for him to three-putt the tenth. When he was bunkered at the thirteenth he found himself two down, and although he won the penultimate hole, he could not break through Stevenson’s defences at the last.

Waikato’s success has been extraordinary, for three of its players are new to Rose Bowl golf and Stevenson has played only twice before. The transfer of Stevens to Auckland, the unavailability of the former national champion, E. J. McDougall, and the bad luck suffered by the accomplished P. A. Maude—who walked into a plate glass door and spent 14 days in a wheelchair as a result—made the team’s chances slim. To a certain extent, it has been favoured by the draw, and the real test of its ability will come tomorrow, when it will play Canterbury and Wellington. One of the key matches

yesterday was between Otago and Wellington, both desperate for a win. In the end it all rested on Durry and Murray. SUCCESSIVE WINS The Wellington captain held a three-hole lead on Murray after 12 holes but his tight-lipped rival wiped out the deficit by winning the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth, with two pars and a birdie. Then Murray descended to ’ the commonplace. Needing only to halve the eighteenth ,to give Otago victory, he : hooked his drive into the 1 trees and played his recovery ; across the fairway into an- ' other belt of trees on the 1 right He took four to reach ’ the green, and his desperate 18ft putt for a half hit the ! hole and stayed out. Canterbury and Mid-South : Canterbury had a grand tussle • and although Canterbury held 1 a narrow lead at the turn, the • Mid-South men had squared ' the account by the end. , T. E. Pfahlert who has won all his games, played tidily to beat J. R. Broadhust G. P. i Vesty shook off R. E. Clem- ' ent in the second nine holes, . and the 18-year-old Timaru [ boy, W. L. Maw, playing in . his first Freyberg, covered ' himself in glory by beating , J. F. Logie. i There was little between . the players but Maw clung to his lead with remorseless par r golf after eight He showed , remarkable temperament for one so young and inexperieni ced, and at the end he was I only one over par. RICHARDS STEADY

E. H. M. Richards, playing fairly dose to the card, was too steady for Ashburton’s A. C. Brownb, and D. R. Hope kept the pressure on I. S. Harvey until flaws appeared in the Timaru player’s short game. Canterbury’s number five, R. K. Atkinson, established a winning lead at the fourteenth without having to play out the hole. His opponent, M. J. Holden, plucked a stone out of a bunker before addressing his ball and Atkinson quite rightly claimed the hole, to be two up. The most pleasing feature of Atkinson’s game was that he had only one three-putt in his round. By lunch time yesterday he had had 14 and he is now using his tenth different putting stance of the tournament. The cold wind made local knowledge valuable in the Canterbury-Otago match, but for all that the Canterbury men did not come up to expectations. Otago won, 5-1, and it was incongrous that Broadhurst gained Canterbury’s only win, with a oneover par five at the seventeenth. CLEMENTS AGAIN LOSES Richards found Murray at his soundest, Clement was only a shadow of his usual

self, Atkinson was visited by his three-putting malady after recovering three holes from a five-hole deficit, and Logie was edged out by his former Harewood club colleague, C. G. Munro.

Hope fought a splendid duel with the 20-year-old St. Clair player, G. E. Clarke, but lost three successive holes after the turn. His fighting spirit was unquenched, however, and he won two holes back. Clarke was showing signs of strain at the sixteenth but Hope’s putt for a birdie and a win passed over the corner of the hole and failed to drop. Clarke holed a putt of 15ft on the seventeenth.

The big surprise of yesterday morning’s round was the defeat of Wellington by Bay of Plenty. Points are:—

Waikato 4; Auckland and MidSouth Canterbury 3; Canterbury. Wellington, Otago, Southland, and Bay of Plenty 2J; Manawatu-Wanganul 2; Gisborne li; Buller-Westland-Nel-son-Marlborough 1; Hawke’s Bay and Northland i; Taranaki 0.