Brenda Rhodes achieves N.Z. golf ‘grand slam’

Press, 25 September 1980, Page 34

Brenda Rhodes achieves N.Z. golf ‘grand slam’

PA Wanganui A new queen of New Zealand women’s golf was crowned at Belmont, Wanganui, yesterday — the unflappable Te Puke 22-year-old, Brenda Rhodes, a triple champion.

She exhibited nerves of steel to pip the up-and-coming Nelson player, Debbie Randell, 3 and 1, in one of the classic match-play finals in national women’s golfing history.

In what the Manawatu evergreen, Jean Whitehead, described as “the best final” she has seen anywhere in the world, Mrs Rhodes wrote a new chapter in the record books by recording the “grand slam” — she won the strokeplay competition for the Mellsop Cup on Saturday, and also the foursomes last Wednesday. She is believed to be only the third player to achieve the remarkable feat, emulating the deeds of Nicki Campbell. (Nelson) in 1958 and Liz Douglas (Southland) in 1976. In a tremendous final in which Mrs Rhodes remained ultra-calm under extreme pressure, and Miss Randell, aged 17, the present national junior, champion, played her short game to near perfection, Mrs Rhodes clinched her fantastic treble with two dynamic birdie putts on the thirty-first and thirty-second greens.

Up to then the Te Puke player had had more than her share, of putting problems.

“I was starting to think I had lost it going into the thirtieth,” said Mrs .Rhodes. But that hole proved the turning point. Out of a bunker on the par-five hole in three, she landed a long putt for a birdie to a par. “I felt then that I might have it,” she. said. Suddenly, oozing confidence after feeling “thoroughly uncomfortable” with her putter all day, she landed a second straight birdie

on the fourteenth to go one up. ■ _

“Mind you that putt was going a million miles an hour,” said Rhodes. But it hit the back of the cup with a resounding bang, and suddenly Mrs Rhodes was in full flight again. Through the short fifteenth in matching par threes, Mrs Rhodes put herself dormie two up on the difficult up-wind sixteenth with precision golf . — straight and true on the green in two to putt out for a par.

Miss Randell pushed her drive to the right rough and chipped free before landing a superb iron to the green. However, her par putt wouldn’t fall.

Mrs Rhodes again played a magnificent second to the seventeenth and again won in par.

Efficient in all but her putting, a relieved Mrs Rhodes confessed last evening: “I’m exhausted ... but tremendously happy.”

Miss Randell was not disgraced in defeat. Many aspects of her game, especially play from bunkers, and in chipping, were at times outstanding. “I set out to give Brenda a good game, and I’m glad I was able to,” said Miss Randell. “I was quite happy with my game — I’ve played better — but I felt around the green I went well.” She, too, pinpointed Mrs Rhodes’ birdie putts on the thirty-first and thirty-second as the turning points in the final.

The morning 18-holes had had plenty of drama, with Miss Randell going two up by the fourth, and Mrs Rhodes squaring at the sixth. The Nelson girl came

back to lead 2-up at the ninth, but Mrs Rhodes rebounded to the front on the second nine and, with wins on the seventeenth and eighteenth, she had a twohole advantage at lunch. Miss Randell attacked again straight after the restart, winning the nineteenth and twentieth to square the match. Fortunes fluctuated until the pair reached the twenty-se'enth all-square. Caught in a grass bunker without a chance of recovering, Mrs Rhodes lost the twenty-eighth but back she came with those two mighty birdies on the thirtyfirst and thirty-second to establish a lead which was to allow her to wrap up the title 3 and 1 on the thirtyfifth. The final accolade for Mrs Rhodes was that she won the Marilyn Smith Award as New Zealand’s woman golfer of the year — a deserved honour. The New. Zealand Plate was won by Manukau’s- Kaye Maxwell, 2 and 1, over a fellow-Aucklander, Pauline Meyer, in an 18-hole match. In two championships concluded in the morning, Dianne Bristol, aged 18, of Wanganui, won the Waddell Rosebowl, defeating a former New Zealand representative, Ruth Middleton, 5 and 4, and Judith Gimblett, of Hastings, accounted for Wanganui’s Sue Westwood at the nineteenth in the Waddell Rosebowl Plate.