New Zealand’s hopes holed by Japan’s putting

Press, 11 February 1981, Page 22

New Zealand’s hopes holed by Japan’s putting

By

BOB SCHUMACHER

The golfing aphorism, “drive for show, putt for dough,” rang loud and clear',, in the ears of the four-man. New Zealand golf team; which lost the inaugural Air New ■ Zealand sponsored 72-hole stroke tournament against Japan by, 10 strokes at Shirley last week.' \ ’ .* ; Being an amateur competition, neither team was in a position to "putt for. dough" and the New Zealand quartet • of Geoff Clarke, Michael Barltrop, Paul Hartstone and Colin Taylor would be thankful forthat. / Had money been at stake, the Japanese would have been .the .princes, the. New Zealanders the paupers. '"tJ. < • ■ From tee to ' green, the New Zealand players more than matched their experienced opponents, but one on the putting surface they were in .trouble and the big advantage gained by the Japanese there proved the decisive factor. The Japanese did not believe in. three-putting and getting down in two putts seemed like an act of negligence. Their success rate with putts from 4m to 5m was astonishingly. high; but they deserved to succeed. The greens were slower .than. they were accustomed to, but they stroked the ball firmly and confidently. In contrast, the New Zealanders, especially the country’s most accomp 1 i s h e d international, Clarke, and also Taylor : found the correct line to

.the hole impossible to .plot; • < ; Even though Hartstbne ■ and Barltrop did hot get a .high percentage of oneputts '— arid both gave themselves many opportu-, nities through . the excellence of their play to the greens — they were generally' sound with the testing one and two metre putts,. They did not resort to stabbing the putts as did Clarke and Taylor. Harstone, the national amateur champion and most powerful player on display, and Barltrop have a lot more to offer to

New Zealand golf. Hartstope,. aged 31, is an assertive player who attacks the holes with the boldness of a ■ lion. His agressive approach and talents have won him the national, North Island and South Island championships in recent times as well as the Peter Stuyyesant Cup. He has played for his country since 1977. Sometimes Hartstone’s power brought about his undoing, such as. when he landed in the creek on the seventeenth at Shirley even though; he used an iron off. the tee .when the other players: Were still playing ■ woods. Biit he played, many , memorable shots, none more so than

when he was bunkered down the fairway on the eight and, from an awkward lie, reached ,the green 150 m away with an iron. In the last two years, Barltrop,' a national junior from 1975 to 1977, has become more than just one ,of many promising young players. At' 24 years, he is dedicated, unemotional' and thought- . ful. He hit many majestic shots and made few errors. <■ . In 1978, Barltrop, ’a younger brother, of a former New Zealand cham-

pion, Rod, was No.. 1 for Manawatu-Wanganui at the Freyberg Rose Bowl tournament. On that occasion he had just one win and two havles from seven matches. For the last two years, he has been playing in Auckland and has' been that province’s top player, no. mean feat in that strongly competitive area. Auckland has won the last two Freyberg tournaments and Barltrop has won 12 and lost only two matches in the hot seat at the topi during that period. Clarke came to Shirley confident that his golf was the best it had been for at least six months

and to testify to that, he had - recently returned from Australia where he had finished third in the Australian stroke championship. However, he had too many bad patches at Shirley to feel happy with his game. His swing has increased in speed and lost some of the fluency of yore. On the <’l v, Clarke iriissed some small putts and that \Vorried him. He started to see , hidden>evils in the greens and. tb stab his putts, so -much-so that putts from

less • than 2m failed to even lip the hole. Poor Taylor will not want to see Shirley for some considerable time. Only one of his four rounds counted towards the New Zealand total and he had some horrendous times On the first day, he took eight on the par-4 eighth after incurring a two-stroke penalty for moving a leaf when his ball was in a hazard. He started better in both rounds on the second day, but his putting, never convincing, fell completely apart as he lost all confidence in his inability to make any one putts. He

was a person to be pitied in the last round, when he was bunkered at the par-3 seventh and took three to emerge, finishing with a three-over 7. Japan treated this first contest of what is to become an annual, event on a home and away basis in all seriousness. It. was represented by the four players who did exceedingly well in the 1980 Eisenhower Trophy world teams' championship, an event in which Japan finished fourth. Tetsuo Sakata, the senior member of the team and a veteran of six Eisenhower Trophy contests, was the most steady player and hardly hit a false shot. He and Fuminori Sano putted superbly. The other three players, Sano, Masayuki Naito and Tatsuhiko Asakawa, had their anxious moments with their long games, hut survived through their. deft touch with their short irons and putters. Naito proved a real crowd-pleaser. His set of clubs with their graphite shafts were under constant scrutiny from envious spectators, envious because the clubs were valued at $5OOO. Of fragile appearance, Naito, with his ability to keep the ball low, achieved surprising distances off the tees and was most competent on the greens. He modelled his putting style on that of Japan’s top professional, Isao Aoki, having the toe of the putter raised. That was not so unexpected when it was revealed later that Naito was a pupil of Aoki. I