Poverty Bay head greenkeeper Rowan Clark (pictured teeing off at Tahunga Golf Club recently) and Simon Jeune have the top seed target on their back after the qualifying round of the Barns-Graham Cup men's pairs at the Awapuni Links course. Photo / Chris Taewa
Poverty Bay head greenkeeper Rowan Clark (pictured teeing off at Tahunga Golf Club recently) and Simon Jeune have the top seed target on their back after the qualifying round of the Barns-Graham Cup men's pairs at the Awapuni Links course. Photo / Chris Taewa
Poverty Bay
Rowan Clark and Simon Jeune were members of what remains the most successful Poverty Bay-East Coast men’s team in national interprovincial history.
Forty-four years after the-then teenagers helped PBEC to sixth out of 14 teams at the 1981 Government Life Freyberg Rosebowl on the Poverty Bay course, theyhave joined forces in pursuit of Gisborne Motors Barns-Graham Cup men’s pairs glory.
And on Saturday, they will tee off in the first round of matchplay as the No 1 seeds.
Clark, now Awapuni Links head greenkeeper, and his good mate and 2019 Poverty Bay Open champion Jeune earned the top spot with a 46-point best-ball stableford haul in qualifying last Saturday.
Clark, off an eyebrow-raising 12 – a reflection of the little golf he has played in recent years – fired 78 off the stick, including pitching in for birdie on the 18th in front of the 19th-hole gallery.
He had eight three-pointers and a four-pointer while the ever-reliable Jeune backed up with 76 off a 3-handicap.
The 37 pairs, although a couple of players had to qualify on their own, were vying for 32 places.
Two duos posted 45 points, recent returnee to the club Manav Garewal and Alister Jennings and two-time BG Cup champion Barry Brown with Ross Gibson.
Garewal, off 25, had eight three-pointers on his card and Jennings chimed in with birdies on the first, seventh and stroke 1 12th (a four-pointer).
Brown, who has found his golfing mojo in recent weeks, had nine three-pointers in his 84-16-68.
Two father-son combos filled the fourth and fifth seedings – Waiti and Kymani Tamatea and Shannon and Rua Ratima.
The sixth-placed qualifiers produced one of the stories of the day. Craig Palmer and Ross Morley had 11 points after seven holes, but when Palmer chipped in for birdie-3 on the eighth, it was the catalyst to a points-scoring blitz.
Another three-pointer followed on the ninth hole for a total of 17 and they combined brilliantly for six three-pointers and a four-pointer for a back-nine haul of 26 and 43 in total.
Palmer, off a 3, carded two-under 34 for the nine while 14-handicapper Morley shot 39.
Jett Whitaker, in the absence of Bruce Talbot, qualified on his own with 36 points for 27th overall.
The return of Joe Green, the oldest in the field at 84, and John Grant to BG action after many years was a fizzer. They failed to qualify on 33 points.
Richard Foon and Neville West grabbed the 32nd and last qualifying spot with 35 points on countback from two other combinations.
There was clubhouse talk of a top qualifiers’ curse, which Foon and West will be out to enact against Clark and Jeune on Saturday.
The dark horses of the field could be Nick Richardson and Wade Owen – the latter a former PBEC representative now off a 14-handicap that is sure to drop with regular play.
Clark’s top qualifying performance mirrored his Electrinet Park greenkeeping counterpart, Pete Tamatea, who is joined by Darren Kahukoti to be the No 1 seeds in the Te Kanawa Cup men’s pairs.
Simon Jeune played Robin to mate Rowan Clark's Batman as they qualified top for the Barns-Graham Cup men's pairs at Poverty Bay Golf Club. Photo / Paul Rickard
TUESDAY – Veterans’ Stableford: K. Goldsmith 36 on putt-off from D. Niven 36, B. Brown 35, M Garewal 33.
Twos: B. Brown.
Hidden hole: P. Rickard.
SUNDAY – Men’s Stableford, division 1: D. Bullivant 36, B. Anderson 36, S. Andreassen 35.
Pipi and Ford defeated Kath Papuni and Jacque Akuhata-Nickerson on the 18th.
Ford was also the victor in the John Penny Cup matchplay series. Ford beat Karen Hay on the 18th hole of what the winner described as “a great match”, with both playing handicap golf.
Several pairs were vanquished to the minor trophy sections as the top 16 was all but finalised in Te Kanawa Cup men’s pairs matchplay action.
Father and son Anthony and Shaun Pahina beat Zane Boyle and Tony Leggett 5 and 4, while Tom Reynolds and Darrel Gregory eliminated Junior Akurangi and Tim Beattie 4 and 2.
Paul Wellard, whose partner Phil Nepia was unavailable, did well to take Wally Whangapirita and Mat Greeks to the 16th; Josh Hayes and Pete Stewart knocked out Horst Schreiber and Evan Parkin 3 and 2; and Brad Reynolds’ hopes of adding another Te K honour to his collection were scuppered when he and Luke Hayes lost on the 18th to Geoff Lowry and Glyn Williams.
Three other matches ended on the 17th – Bailey Matoe and Jason Devery beating Derek Craven and Glenn Hart, Zavier Lister and John Adams ousting Mason Emery and Duane Mauheni, and Ian Loffler and Steve Webb seeing off Rueben Maynard and Matt Rofe.
The match between Alex Nanai and John Collier snr and brothers Sel and Quentin Peneha is still to be played.
Patutahi
The sky won’t be the only place where stars are shining for the Matariki public holiday celebration of the Māori New Year on Friday.
Patutahi will be humming throughout the day and into the night during the inaugural Māori Matariki Tournament, a teams event with a difference.
The tournament was originally going to be held in the afternoon only, but such was its popularity, organisers decided to open it up for morning play as well.
The result is a full field of 72 players in teams of four in the morning and another 72 in the afternoon.
The format involves one player contributing a gross score, one a net and one a stableford to the team total. There is a fourth wildcard team member who can be “subbed in” for any other team member’s score at the end of play.
Plenty of prizes are up for grabs, including $1000 for a hole-in-one on the ninth.
Tony Green’s return from holidaying in Australia and Thailand was a triumphant one on Sunday.
The Patutahi president mixed 12 pars and six bogeys in his 76-11-65, for 41 points, to win the division 1 Stableford.
The Te Kani Pere men’s and McKeague Cup women’s handicap matchplay champions will be crowned on Sunday.
Six-time senior club champion Hukanui Brown, off a plus-3 handicap, faces 20-handicapper Cecil Brown in the Te Kani final while Kennedy Sarich and Denise Johnston battle it out in the McKeague decider.
SUNDAY – Men’s Stableford, division 1: T. Green 41, S. Pohatu 37, D. Pohatu 36, T. Reeves 36, H. Harris 36.
He recalls finding lost balls and selling them to members to make money to buy some clubs.
And more than 60 years after that, he now has another memory to cherish ... his first hole-in-one.
Carmody, who grew up not far from the Awapuni Links course, ended a 65-year wait when he aced the 121m sixth hole during qualifying for the Barns-Graham Cup men’s pairs on Saturday.
He was sheepish when asked what club he used.
“Wedge,” he lied with a wry smile, but no one on the 19th believed him.
Carmody, at 70 years old, doesn’t hit the ball out the distance of his younger days, so his perfect shot came via a 5-wood, mitigating that old phrase “it’s not what you use...”.
Carmody lived in Australia for many years, working in the rail and meatworks industries before returning to Gisborne, where the long-time keen hunter is now a “hired gun” for predator and pest control among other outdoors work.
He has great memories of the Poverty Bay course and his golf when growing up in Manuka St, Elgin.
“I used to love it.”
A hole-in-one had always been on the “to do” list, although he reckoned he hadn’t got that close before Saturday.
Carmody, a former single-figure player who nowadays plays off 12-13, didn’t see his ball go in the hole. He saw it land over the front bunker, but not where it ended, and when he got to the green, he feared it was in the left-hand bunker.
After confirmation, there was “yahooing and carrying on” before getting on with the job of helping partner Colin Simpson qualify 25th in the BG Cup top 32.
