Victorian Jarrod Lyle and Queensland's Gavin Flint will head an eleven-pronged Australian attack at the New Zealand amateur golf championships in Taupo.
The week-long national championships start on Sunday with the 36-hole foursomes. The 72-hole stroke-play title will be decided on Wednesday and the New Zealand match-play champion will be known after the 36-hole final on Sunday next week.
Although the Waikato pairing of Glenn Millin and Brad Shilton won last year's foursomes, the premier individual titles went to Australians. Now-professional Kurt Barnes took the strokeplay crown and James Nitties beat Hamish Robertson of Taihape 3 and 2 in the matchplay final.
Lyle finished fourth in the strokeplay championship while Flint, 22, is the amateur champion of New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland.
The cream of New Zealand's amateur golf talent will also be at Taupo striving to keep the national titles on this side of the Tasman.
The main hopes lie with two members of the New Zealand team who won the Southern Cross international quadrangular in South Africa last November. They are 2002 national strokeplay champion Brad Shilton of Te Awamutu and Springfield's Mark Smith.
The other two team members of that team -- Wellington's Brad Iles, who won the Australian 72-hole strokeplay title at Royal Adelaide last month, and Waikato's Mathew Holten -- will miss the tournament because of their selection in the Asia Pacific team to play Europe in the biennial contest for the Bonnallack Trophy in Rome this month.
New Zealand Eisenhower squad members Jae An, Kevin Chun, Doug Holloway, Riki Kauika, and Mark Purser are among the 168 amateurs looking to make the 64-player cut at the end of 36 holes of strokeplay on Tuesday.
- NZPA
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