Golfing duo firm selection chances

Press, 25 July 1986, Page 36

Golfing duo firm selection chances

By

BOB SCHUMACHER

Canterbury has two golfers very much in the reckoning for New Zealand honours later in the year. Brent Paterson and Mark Street, the province’s top pair at last year’s Government Life tournament, did nothing to damage their chances of selection for the fiveman national team to compete in the Australian amateur championship lit September when at Hamil-

ton during tbe weekend. They were among a handful of players invited to the B.N.Z. Waikato midwinter open at Lochiel, an event which had a good sprinkling of the nation’s best amateurs and which served as an “unofficial*’ trial. Street, aged 26, started spectacularly and was the overnight leader after a first round of 69, three-under par, was backed up with 72. He faded on the second day,

scoring 79 and 78, but still finished only five strokes behind the Hawke’s Bay No. 1, Jamie Kupa, who carded 293. Paterson, on 299, was just one shot in arrears of Street, but the Corlnga golfer distinguished himself in the last round with a par round which included a three-hole burst of birdie, birdie, eagle. The eagle was a hole-in-one, Paterson taking a No. 8 iron to play the perfect shot at the 133 m

hole. It was the third ace for Paterson, a New Zealand senior representative since 1984. Of the New Zealand four-man senior team which lost to Australia in the Sloan Morpeth Trophy International earlier this year, only Owen Kendall did not play at Lochiel. He had another golfing commitment. The other three, Paterson, and the Aucklanders, Mike Barltrop and Terry Cochrane, all fin-

ished well placed. A New Zealand junior, Elliot Boult, was unable to compete because of a broken collar bone, suffered in soccer, but the Manawatu golfer, Craig Perks, back from the University of Oklahoma, and Glen Goldfinch (Auckland), both national juniors, were others to compete by invitation. Barltrop, New. Zealand’s most experienced international, is not available for the Australian trip and that must increase Street’s

tion prospects. Paterson, on his past deeds, would seem a certainty. The Canterbury pair must also be in line for the most prestigious amateur teams event in the world, the Eisenhower Trophy, in Venezuela in October, and Paterson would be among the top fancies if New Zealand is represented by a team of two in an invitation tournament in Colombia after the world teams championship.