A desperate call home to his coach on Friday night helped lift Gore golfer Vaughan McCall to his finest achievement of a burgeoning career yesterday at the New Zealand Amateur at Mount Maunganui.
Known as one of the best short-stick exponents in the amateur game, the 20-year-old was at his wits end after the first day of matchplay on Friday, struggling to make anything from 10 feet.
In desperation he phoned his Dunedin-based coach Alan Rose, seeking an urgent remedy to his unfolding horror on the slick Mount greens.
"I'd come up from down south early and really felt I had the course and the greens sussed, but those first two rounds of matchplay were a disaster, with anything inside 10 feet just horrific," McCall said. "I was hardly making 50 per cent."
Unsighted, Rose gave him some trigger points to work on, with the key making sure his head was dead still over his putts.
"I actually came into the clubhouse on Saturday morning, put a ball against the wall and, sure enough, my head was moving back and forward. So that was a real focus all day, making sure I had passive hands, a still head and rocked the shoulders."
McCall didn't miss a single putt from inside 10 feet yesterday and his 6 and 5 defeat of Rotorua teen Peter Lee landed him a rare double in New Zealand golf.
He became the first golfer in 24 years to win both the national strokeplay and matchplay amateur titles in the same year and the first Kiwi in 39 years after Tauranga's Mike Nicholson, the former Mount Maunganui pro, won both events at Springfield in 1973.
He is also the first golfer from Southland to win the New Zealand Amateur, just as he was the first golfer from the deep south to have won the strokeplay, which followed on from captaining Southland to their first interprovincial win last December.
World famous in Gore then?
"Yeah, I guess most Gore people now know who I am. They see my ugly mug in the paper often enough. But this win means a lot and I can't wait to get back to Gore and share this with them."
McCall got to the Mount early and did his homework, sorting out a couple of unconventional driver lines off the 13th and 16th tees he felt would give him a slight edge.
He won the opening two holes and reached the 18th hole turn with a 3up advantage after great birdie putts at the 16th and the 18th. The momentum hung around in the afternoon, winning the 19th and 20th holes to move to 5up. Lee was always playing catch up and never did, with McCall always finding a response whenever Lee clawed a hole back.
The 17-year-old McDonalds manager has had a superb week but had no answer around the greens. "That was a red hot putter of his and he sure made some clutch putts," Lee said. "The door never opened for me but my game was never really there today from the start."
McCall said the turning point of the match was in the first round on the 16th where he had a 30 foot putt for birdie to Lee's eight feet. "I said to myself 'right if I can hole this it will put a lot of pressure on' and I made mine and he missed. That was a big turning point."
McCall has been working hard on his mental game and stayed ultra-relaxed, something he said Lee would learn in time. "Peter's a huge talent and has a big future (but) was a bit inconsistent and that came down to the pressure. I'm a nervous player and I figured if I was nervous and had been there before then Peter would be nervous too in his first Amateur."