Holder Helps Crown New Golf Champion

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31346, 17 April 1967, Page 3

Holder Helps Crown New Golf Champion

(From Our Own Reporter) DUNEDIN. The crowned head of New Zealand provincial golf no longer, Wellington nevertheless made a most effective kingmaker on the final day of the Freyberg Rose Bowl tournament at St. Clair on Saturday.

By losing to Auckland in the morning and by defeating the previously unbeaten Waikato side in the afternoon, Wellington enabled the Aucklanders to win the coveted trophy for 1967.

The fate of the contest depended on how P. R. Rankin, Wellington’s No. 4, handled a 60ft putt on the eighteenth green as twilight descended on the course. Rankin’s opponent, K. B. Haggie, who had fought back from three down at the turn to all square at the seventeenth, had to win the final hole to enable Waikato to tie the match and so win the Rose Bowl.

Haggle’s approach to the eighteenth green was pin high, 20ft from the hole, while Rankin’s ball was at the front of the green. But from the moment the Wellington man putted it was evident that he had judged the weight correctly, and long before the ball had stopped lOin from the hole the Auckland manager (Mr D. Marshall) had cried “you beaut” in recognition of the far-reaching effect of the stroke. PUTTED SHORT

As an experienced player, Haggie should have realised that he had nothing to lose by putting full tilt for the hole. In his anxiety, however, he was grossly short and his halved match gave Wellington victory and the Rose Bowl to Auckland. There was widespread sympathy for Waikato, for it has been runner-up in three successive Freybergs and entered this tournament with three players new to Rose Bowl golf. The team beat Canterbury on Saturday morning for its sixth successive win but the loss to Wellington enabled Auckland to draw level in points and win the trophy on a count-back of individual games won. The final points, with individual wins in parenthesis, were:—

Auckland 6 (311), Waikato 6 (271), Otago 51 (28), Wellington 44 (231), Manawatu-Wanganui 4 (211), Canterbury 3i (21), Bay of Plenty 3 (22), Hawke’s Bay 3 (194), Mid-South Canterbury

3 (19>. Southland 24 (18), Gisborne 2J < 16J), Taranaki 2 (174), Buller - Westland-Nelson - Marlborough 2 (164), Northland 1 (12). LOST SEVENTH GAME No player won all his seven matches, but S. Reid (Waikato), a 21-year-old dairy farmer who gets almost all his golf on a n.ne-hole course on his father’s property at Ngahinepouri, near Hamilton, made an earnest effort to do so. After six successive wins, he lost his final game to the former international player P. K. Creighton (Wellington). The Auckland captain, B P. Vezich, his No. 3. B A Stevens, who played for New Zealand in Mexco last October and Southland’s fifth man, M. R. Radford, were all übeaten, having one or two halves among their totals. If there was sympathy for Waikato, there was general satisfaction at Auckland’s win, for it was the best team at St. Clair There was strength throughout the order, with Vezich and Stevens unbeaten at numbers two and three; R. W. Wilkinson, a 42-year-old Regular Force Army captain—who was in the winning Wellington team last year—losing only once at No. 5, and two exceptionally steady young men, K. R. Hankin and R. D. Gillespie, each scoring five points in the seven games. The least successful member of the team was the No. 1, the 18-year-old B. C. Rafferty, but he played good golf and on the final day gained a well-deserved win against the international, J. D. Durry (Wellington). WEDDING LINKS Auckland swept Wellington aside in the penultimate round, the only loss being sustained by Hankin, who, ironically, played his best golf of the week, yet was beaten by the steadier Rankin in a fine match. On their way round the course the rivals found they had more in common than similarly-sound-

ing surnames; they are to be married within half an hour of each other next Saturday. While Auckland was dealing methodically with Wellington. Waikato was continuing its steady march towards its goal by beating Canterbury. It was not an easy victory, however, for D. R. Hope and J. F. Logie won well and E. H. M. Richards made a valiant attempt to end G. C. Stevenson’s unbeaten run. A quiet, withdrawn golfer. Stevenson generally had an answer to Richards’s best shots. This pattern was vividly illustrated on the steeply rising ninth hole, where the Canterbury man’s drive hit some trees, 225yds out from the tee, on the full and forced him to play through a 3ft gap without a sight of the pin. Calmly he hit a flat No. 6 iron to the back of the green 100yds away, and holed his chip magnificently. Stevenson remained unmoved by all these dashing deeds. He reached the green easily in two and holed a 12ft putt to halve the hole in two birdies.

BORROWED DRIVER Hope was in brilliant form, and was four under the card in beating the New Zealand Maori champion, T. Ormsby. Hope hit the ball crisply and cleanly and judged the pace of the greens well. With his borrowed driver working well, Logie scored solidly; he was two under par for 13 holes, but two two-overs extended the match to the fifteenth hole. Canterbury’s other three men, R. E. Clements, J. R. Broadhurst, and R. K. Atkinson, lost through the high standard achieved by their opponents: Atkinson’s opponent, the lanky Reid, was four under par winning, 7 and 5.

With Clements ending his run of losses by beating the lefthanded prodigy, P. R. Adams, Canterbury completed its programme by defeating Southland comfortably.