Title win sweet for Lee

By CRAIG TIRIANA
BAY of Plenty's Danny Lee is just the second Springfield golfer to win the New Zealand amateur title.
Lee also became just the second 16-year old to win the New Zealand matchplay golf title when he downed Nick Gillespie 7 and 5 yesterday at the Hamilton Golf Club.
Walter Godfrey wrote his name into New Zealand golf history in 1958 when, at the age of 16, he became the youngest amateur to win the national matchplay championship at the St Andrews course in Hamilton.
Coincidentally Lee emulated Godfrey's feat at the same course.
It was not a classic final, Gillespie being the first to admit his confidence with the driver was down and hewas standing on the tee with no idea where his drive was going. When it finished at the 31st hole, Lee was one-under and Gillespie seven-over.
After 18 holes, Lee was five up, and the result almost a foregone conclusion even with the afternoon round to come.
A birdie at the first in the second round gave Gillespie a glimmer of hope, but that died when his drive at the next rested against a tree. He took a penalty drop and lost the hole with a double bogey.
"I was behind the eight-ball at lunch because you can't give a player of the quality of Danny Lee a five-hole start and that drive on the second about summed it up," Gillespie said.
Lee's win confirmed that he and Hamilton's James Gill, winner of the New Zealand 72-hole strokeplay championship on Thursday, are clearly the country's best two amateurs.
It has been a stellar year already for Lee who has won the New Zealand under-23 championship in Hastings, the South Island 72-hole stroke play championship at Shirley and his two singles when New Zealand beat Australia in the Sloan Morpeth international at Royal Canberra recently.
Lee said that the match play title meant more to him than the strokeplay.
"I tried to shoot low in the stroke rounds but it didn't happen (he tied for 12th on one-under par 287), but I cared most about the matchplay _ I think that is the most important."
Lee has set the world Eisenhower Trophy team tournament in Adelaide as his next major mission and that means he is heading to Korea in a fortnight to tee up in the Maekyung professional event.
He has missed the cut in his two professional starts to date _ the Australian Open and New Zealand Open. Lee also joined Eddie Burgess (2000), Owen Kendall (1987), Mike Nicholson (1973) and Peters (1982) as the only Bay of Plenty winners of the country's most significant amateur title.
Lee came through the matchplay draw accounting for Australians Tim Stewart and Tom Prouse 5/4 and 1-up respectively before edging past Tauranga's Jared Pender 1-up and strokeplay winner James Gill also 1-up during Saturday afternoon's semifinal.
Pender almost ended Lee's run in the quarterfinal. Lee needed birdies on the 16th and 17th holes to draw level and earned a semifinal with a bogey on the final hole.
Gillespie, son of former New Zealand cricketer, Stu Gillespie, said he was "stoked" to make the final in only his second appearance at the championship. But after 12 rounds in eight days he said he was "knackered".