Mrs Cullen reaches semi-final with two convincing wins

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32587, 22 April 1971, Page 32

Mrs Cullen reaches semi-final with two convincing wins

Fortunes followed form yesterday, and there now seems little to stop Mrs N. D. Cullen going on to victory in the Canterbury women’s match-play golf championship at Shirley. She needed to play only a total of 23 holes in the eighth and quarter-finals to win her way into today’s semi-finals.

But while Mrs Cullen was conserving her energy for the final stages, her prospective opponents were stretched to the limit.

The 1967 New Zealand representative, Miss W. M. Bryant, was taken to the eighteenth before she could overcome a doughty battler in Mrs B. Clinton; and Miss S. M. Hamilton needed a full round also to beat a fellow Russell Grace tournament player. Miss M. A. Ensor. Miss M. J. Doherty, the fourth member of the tournament team to reach these stages of the championship, had an even sterner battle from Miss P. M. McDonald. 19th HOLE DECISION

Miss McDonald levelled the match on the eighteenth, and they had to go to an extra hole before Miss Doherty won the right to play Mrs Cullen. There was a great deal to admire in the cool, calm, efficiency of Mrs Cullen, who removed Mrs R. B. Anderson, 7 and 6, and then made even shorter work of Mrs M. Lafferty, 8 and 7, in the afternoon.

She was, in her own words,

“hitting the ball miles better” than on the qualifying day when she led the field. “Conditions were much better, of course, but I am hitting the greens, and that’s the pleasing part,” said Mrs Cullen. EARLY DISASTERS

The other three quarterfinals were extremely tense affairs, none more so than the Hamilton-Ensor clash. After a disastrous start, threeputting both the first two holes and immediately going two down. Miss Hamilton took a grip on the game without ever exercising absolute control. She won back those two holes at the fourth (with a birdie) and sixth, and moved two holes ahead on the eighth and ninth, in the latter case, again with a birdie after a 20-foot putt.

Miss Ensor made a gesture by winning the twelfth, but Miss Hamilton immediately responded by winning the thirteenth, and her position looked very comfortable when she was two up with four to play. Miss Ensor did not view it as hopeless, however, and started the haul back on the fifteenth with a steady par while Miss Hamilton was pushing her tee shot to the right, and taking two putts as well as the chip. PRESSURE GOLF The pressure was maintained by Miss Ensor on the next, when both played rather badly to take four to reach the green. Miss Ensor, however, slotted in a fine putt of all of 15 feet; and when both took fives at the seventeenth, the match hung on the final hole.

Both played fine, straight drives—Miss Ensor this time matching Miss Hamilton for distance—and both played equally accurate chips. Miss Ensor was short, by nine feet, Miss Hamilton slightly too strong and to the left, five feet away. Miss Ensor’s putt was 15 inches short, Miss Hamilton rammed hers home very boldly, so boldly as to dispute

her comment afterwards: "Difficult putt? I didn’t expect it to go in.” Miss Doherty won the first hole of sudden death when she came out of the bunker to within a foot of the hole. Aptly, it was this facility at sand shots that probably saved her game: three times Miss Doherty was in bunkers, three times. she came out extremely well—and needed to, because her chipping and putting were not very good. She took 13 putts on the last five holes, in fact, and it was this that enabled Miss McDonald to make a grand late charge. SPLENDID RECOVERY Miss Doherty was three up at the turn, which should have ensured her a comfortable victory over Miss McDonald. But not a hole was halved on the home nine, and with Miss McDonald taking far more than her share on the run in, Miss Doherty was very seriously threatened. Miss McDonald won the tenth and twelfth, but Miss Doherty matched these, and maintained her lead, by winning the eleventh and thirteenth. Thereafter there was hardly any stopping Miss McDonald. She won three holes in succession, dropped the seventeenth, but levelled the match at the eighteenth with a magnificent second shot which left her only four feet from the pin.

When it came to the extra hole, however, Miss McDonald had an 18-footer over a tricky piece of downhill which needed to be sunk to match Miss Doherty’s superb bunker shot It slid past on the right, and the game was Miss Doherty’s.

BILLIARDS SHOT Miss Bryant was very pleased with her form which was, she felt, better than when she won New Zealand selection four years ago. "I was very happy with my putting, especially,” she said. “I borrowed a putter from Maureen Doherty—she’s not getting it back now.” Her meeting with Mrs Clinton, a steady performer

from Greendale who has never progressed quite so far in the past, proved a close one after Miss Bryant had marched away to a three-up lead at the tum. Mrs Clinton, however, won the twelfth and fourteenth, and squared the match dramatically at the seventeenth, just as it seemed Miss Bryant would gain a 2 and 1 victory. Miss Bryant was on the green, Mrs Clinton in the bunker. But Mrs Clinton's shot from the sand knocked Miss Bryant’s ball off the green and, having performed that deed, dropped gently in the hole. Mrs Clinton contrived a similar feat at the eighteenth when, with Miss Bryant playing steadily up the middle, Mrs . Clinton found herself bunkered again:

She went for her shot boldly, and all but hit the pin. However, the ball rolled to the back of the green, too far to give her a chance of drawing level. Results were:—

Eighth-finals.—Mrs N. D. Cullen beat Mrs R. B. Anderson, 7 and 6; Mrs M. Lafferty beat Miss L. McClurg, 4 and 2; Miss M. J. Doherty beat Mrs E. Lamberton, 2 and 1; Miss P. M. McDonald beat Mrs C. J. Ward, 1 up; Miss M. A. Ensor beat Mrs L F. Strahl, 6 and 5; Miss S. M. Hamilton beat Miss S. Grigg, 6 and 5; Miss W. M. Bryant beat Mrs A. Harris, 4 and 3; Mrs B. Clinton beat Miss S. A. Ritchie, 3 and 1. Quarter-finals.—Mrs Cullen beat Mrs Lafferty, 8 and 7; Miss Doherty beat Miss McDonald at the nineteenth; Miss Hamilton beat Miss Ensor 1 up; Miss Bryant beat Mrs Clinton, 2 up. emmhhnmi