KAPAI'S CORNER: Swing those hips and celebrate a great week

What a week for Maori sports stars, on the dance floor and on the fairways of fame.
First was the big fulla, Norm Hewitt, who rewrote A Good Keen Man by sending the southern man and his swandry back to the footy fields of the far south. Stormin Norman challenged the stereotypical kiwi bloke by bringing down the house on Sunday night with a twinkle-toed two step that was nothing short of bloody brilliant.
And if that was the entr?e then Michael CamBro Campbell gave us a feed fit for a king and he surely is now king of the kaianga. I am like a lot of CamBro fans having followed him on the fairways in New Zealand and on the hallowed course of Saint Andrews in Scotland.
Golf is a bit like good wine, once you get a taste for it - its hard to give up, and our family was brought up on the grapes of golf.
I remember the balmy summer twilight evenings out on the Mount course as a schoolboy golfer. My mum had a set of clubs that were older than the course itself but she could wind them old hickory sticks up and give that ball a good crack.
These were the days when the great Una Wicham was at her brilliant best. They say that golf reflects your personality and that is true of the way my dad played the game.
What he lacked in co-ordination he made up for with wisdom and his name still stands on the club champs board.
In those days Michael Nicholson ruled the Tauranga courses and my French teacher at school, Brian Ducker was a regular winner at the Mount. Trouble is he practised his lethal swing on the bums of us boys with his bamboo big bertha cane. And it was beaucoup ouch with welts that hurt like hell, no matter how hard you pretended they didn't.
Omanu had some good gunny golfers and my late Aunty Missy was one of them. She won the club champs four times and laid down the challenge to my sister Carol who went one better winning it 5 times.
It was a big day out when three generations of Wirihana, my mum, my sister and my nephew all won on Omanu club champs day. But the best swing I ever saw on a local course was that of the late Anton Stockman, who just like Michael Campbell, had a set of Maori hips that were in perfect syncopation with the club, the ball and the desired destination.
Yes they say that golf is all about timing and Anton sadly didn't make the cut because his timing ended up out of sync with his talents. Haere ra Bro.
Robin Williams the comedian once said of golf it was the only sport where a white man could dress up like a black pimp and for a while there golf was all about fashion not fairways.
Some of the colour combinations on course were as confusing as a King's Cross transvestite, all show and no dough.
But Michael Campbell or Cambo as his brand of clothing is called is about to go global and whoever thought of launching a golfing label with Maori designs on was very much on to it, I wonder who that was?
Yes the Maori month of Matariki has really brought out some shining stars and there is a constellation called Tariana about to shine this Sunday.
And as Michael Campbell said in his victory speech "If I can do it then so can you." Now that's real role model material.
Together with Norm's endorsement of its cool to read it looks like a new generation of well read greens with a good set of swinging hips will be dancing with the stars for many a more matariki to come.
Ma Te Wa