South Island golf team to be named this week-end

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33241, 2 June 1973, Page 4

South Island golf team to be named this week-end

Southern golfers will have their last chance to impress the New Zealand selectors and gain inclusion in the South Island team during the island championship at the Balmacewan course, Dunedin, tlijs week-end. '

The team of six will be announced, in conjunction with the North Island side, after the Dunedin tournament and the North Island championship, which will be held in Auckland. The two teams will clash in the inaugural inter-island contest at Shirley on August 25 and 26. They will play 36 holes of stroke play with the best five scores to count towards the trophy donated by the Royal and Ancient club at the time of the Commonwealth tournament in New Zealand in 1971.

The disappointing feature of the South Island entries was the absence of the leading Canterbury players. None of the members of the Freyberg Rosebowl team will be displaying their talents in front of the southern member of the New Zealand selection panel, Mr J. A. Secular (Dunedin). However, all of. the bestknown players from other provinces — including last year’s winner, G. E. Clarke (Dunedin), and the 1970 and 1971 champion, R. C. Murray (Timaru) — have entered. The selection of the teams will come at an appropriate time. No New Zealand squad is to be chosen this year and players otherwise would not have had much incentive to do well at the tournaments, except to improve on past performances.

But now the contests have gained impetus and competition will be enlivened for two reasons — the prospect of making the island teams and also the New Zealand under 21 side, which will be named at the same time. The junior squad

leaves on a tour of Australia immediately after the completion of the interisland contest.

So the country’s developing golfers will be in competition too. In Dunedin, C. H. Alldred, R. J. Johnson and J. Whitaker (Otago), and in Auckland, M. Nicholson (Tauranga), O. J. Kendall (Manawatu), K. A. Southerden (Hawke’s Bay) and D. McFarlane (Taranaki) will be aiming to gain selection.

Canterbury also has two candidates, G. C. Saunders and D. R. Griffith, who both performed capably in the Freyberg tournament in Christchurch in April. The South Island championship promises to be a battle between the present holder, Clarke, the former New Zealand representative, Murray, and the highly-promising Alldred. But it is unfortunate that Canterbury’s two top men, D. N. Turner and B. C. Taylor will not be challenging for the title.

Clarke is one of the country’s in-form golfers at present, having won all his games at the Freyberg tournament and being the only unbeaten number one player. Soon after the tournament, Clarke, however, had a lapse of form and lost to Johnson in the St Clair club’s senior final.

Clarke will have to be at his best to emulate his victory at last year’s tournament. He shattered a long-standing national standard when he scored rounds of 68, 68, 68 and 71 to total 275 and win by 19 strokes, breaking the record set by A. J. Shaw in 1930 when he won the Manawatu Open by 18 strokes.

A New Zealand representative at the Eisenhower Trophy world event last year, Murray has not been able to find his usual consistent form so far this season. He had a disappointing Freyberg tournament, winning only two of his seven games, so he will , .

be anxious to improve on his performance. The person who could upset the two leading contenders is Alldred, the often brilliant 20-year-old from Dunedin. He was a great success for Otago at number two in the Freyberg tournament, winning six of his seven games. He had one especially meritorious win, over last year’s reserve for the New Zealand team, R. M. Barltrop (Wellington). Below this group challenges should come from J. G. Mackay, D. C. Fraser, both members of the Otago Freyberg team, the promising Johnson, and the Southland Freyberg golfers, J. H. Lapsley and R. G. Wilson. Two North Island golfers, D. M. Badger (Hamilton) and R. D. Faulkner (Masterton), both on two handicaps, have also entered the tournament.