Deserved honour for Canty golfer

Press, 2 March 1984, Page 30

Deserved honour for Canty golfer

BOB SCHUMACHER

Brent Paterson performed only modestly for a player of his proven ability in the South Island golf championship at Oamaru last week-end, but his performance was good enough to earn him selection in the New Zealand senior amateur team for the first time.

Paterson, aged 23, has had a meteoric rise to the top echelon in New Zealand golf. Less than 18 months ago, he had yet to represent Canterbury in Freyberg golf, now he is rated in the country’s top four. He will play against Australi| at St Clair on March

23 and 24 before leaving for Japan to take on that country’s best from April 10 to 14. Paterson’s rapid rise to prominence began at the start of 1982 with successive victories in the Waitikiri and Templeton opens. High placings in the Canterbury and South Island stroke tournaments that year did not go unrecognised and he gained his first national selection in the' under-26 team which competed against Australia for the Clare Higson Trophy. Since then, Paterson has never looked back. He has won many tourn&nents, a national junior &le, and

was in the winning Canterbury Freyberg team last year as well as the successful Canterbury teams in the 1982 and 1983 Southland invitation teams’ stroke tournaments. He retained his place in the national under-26 team which played Australia in Australia last year, and while there he played possibly his finest golf to date. His confident approach and consistent play in that country’s match-play championship amazed the Australian public as well as his Australian opponents. He reached the final and lost on the first extra hole after

being level after 36. Paterson has again prospered this season. He was the best of a combined New Zealand professional and amateur team which played the visiting Oklahoma University side, he won the national junior title, and he finished equal second in the Canterbury stroke championship. Paterson would have been disappointed that he did not finish in the top 12 in the South Island stroke event, but his national senior selection was an honour richly deserved. Another disappointment from the tournament was Canterbury, in spite of

being the national provincial champion in both stroke and match-play championships, had only Paterson picked in the two New Zealand teams chosen. Two recent New Zealand representatives, Jim Lapsley and John Williamson, did not do well enough in the South Island event to hold their places. Mark Street, a member of the national under-26 side last year, also failed to hold his place and will have his sympathisers for he played extremely well when winning the Canterbury stroke championship recently and the provincial

championship last year. Unfortunately for Street, he did not do as well as expected against Australia last year, and he had two bad rounds in the South Island event on Saturday when closely watched by two of the national selectors. However, the reserves for both teams are from Canterbury. John Sanders, a decisive winder of the South Island title, played excellently and must have gone close to gaining a place in the senior four, and Paul Minifie, seventh in the national junior championship and tenth at Oamaru, jas been named reserve for the under-26 team.