"I had a 69 here on Saturday but 81 the round before that, and in all honesty my golf in the last 10-15 years has been pretty awful. I'm a 74 or 75 off the stick kind of player and those aren't scores that will get the job done.
"It's frustrating because I know I can play. I drive it straight but I don't drive it long and I'm out there against young guys who hit it miles. This course is like a par 68 for them where for me it's a genuine par 72. Tighter off the tee would suit me a lot better because you can be long and wide and not be overly penalised because of all the trees that are gone."
Cochrane dabbled in golf from an early age in Auckland but rugby and rugby league were his passions. But his oval ball love affair was cut short by injury while at Otago University.
Cochrane was just weeks into his first teaching job in Auckland when he entered the national amateur at Timaru's Levels course. He qualified handily, scraped through his first few rounds of matchplay before toppling Paul Hartstone 1 up in his semifinal, setting up a 36-hole showdown with Phil Aicken, the rising star of amateur golf.
"I was 3 down with five holes to play, as was customary, and birdied the last to get back to square before finally winning on the third extra hole," Cochrane said. "It caused a few ripples because I'd come from nowhere and Phil was the up-and-coming superstar, the next big thing out of everywhere."
If 1981 was good to Cochrane then '83 was even better. He became the first double winner of the North and South Island titles at Flaxmere and Ashburton, and won the New Zealand strokeplay title at Titirangi before bowing to a bit of McDougall magic in the matchplay semifinal, with the former Einsenhower Trophy rep hitting it stiff from 140m after Cochrane found a bunker.
He made seven national amateur semifinals in all, plus the semifinals of the Aussie matchplay as part of a New Zealand team that included future Eisenhower world teams champions Phil Tataurangi, Michael Campbell, Grant Moorhead and Stephen Scahill.
His own Eisenhower experience was in 1984 when he, Michael Barltrop, John Williamson and Greg Turner gave the title a good tilt at Royal Hong Kong Golf Club before fading on the final nine.
"Because of the year I'd had in '83 they almost had to pick me. I remember standing on the tee during our first practice round and Turner arrived in a taxi straight from the airport (having flown in from the US where he was on scholarship at Oklahoma University).
"He barrelled straight onto the tee, asked which direction the hole played and then pushed it straight into the trees before asking if we were playing mulligans. I didn't even know what a mulligan was!
"He joked and laughed his way through three practice rounds, leaving the rest of us worried he wasn't taking the whole thing seriously enough, before promptly shooting 67 in the first round to lead the tournament."
Turner went on to become one of New Zealand's great pros while Cochrane's dreams of joining the paid ranks came crashing down when he broke his arm on the ski slopes. "I really didn't play much good after that."
