PBEC masters turn the tide

ON A ROLL: Tony Akroyd anchored Poverty Bay-East Coast’s team victory at the Freyberg Masters interprovincial on the Motueka course yesterday. He notched his third consecutive win as PBEC beat Northland 3 and 2. Picture by Paul Rickard

Top 10 destiny is in the hands of Poverty Bay-East Coast after they finally finished the job at the Freyberg Masters interprovincial yesterday.

“It’s a great day for the boys,” an elated PBEC captain Anaru Reedy said of their 3-2 team victory over Northland on Day 3 of the over-40s matchplay tournament being held on the Motueka course.

Reedy was among the heroes of the PBEC side as they collected their first full team point of the week-long event involving all 15 of New Zealand’s golfing provinces.

There was a sense of inevitability to it.

The team have been highly competitive from the get-go to the point of being in a position to win all their matches.

However, the only team reward they had going into yesterday morning’s Round 5 clash was a half-point against Auckland in Round 2.

That all changed as the team lived up to Reedy’s belief that they could “turn the tide”.

The anchor of this week’s performance that had them sitting in 11th place heading into today’s two rounds has been No.3 Tony Akroyd.

“Tonez is loving this course,” Reedy said after the long-time PBEC representative earned his third consecutive individual win.

Akroyd added the notch of Northland’s Martin Burger to his belt — a 4 and 3 win that had one of his Gisborne Park clubmates taking to the Park Facebook page to compare him to American professional Tony Finau.

Akroyd was backed up by No.2 Dwayne Russell, who has been Dwayne “The Rock”-solid throughout the week and beat Tony Riley 3 and 2.

No.5 Jace Brown, who was promoted from reserve early in the week after Pete Bremner fell ill, was rewarded for his perseverance with a half against Vaughan Witten.

With No.4 David Solomann losing 3 and 2 to Nathan Jacoby, all attention turned to Reedy’s match against Brett Dormer.

And of course with team glory in sight for PBEC, it proved a dramatic last few holes.

“This guy can play,” said Reedy who got to 2-up during the round only for Dormer to claw his way back.

One-down playing the 16th, Dormer put his approach on the 16th to 3-feet for a birdie to win the hole.

The pair then traded birdie putts of 14 feet (Reedy) and 12 feet (Dormer) on the 17th.

Playing the 18th, Reedy got a progress report and knew what he had to do.

Dormer made the task a little easier when he found the back bunker with his second shot and Reedy took any danger out of play with a conservative option to halve the hole and seal team victory.

“It was awesome,” he said of the team’s celebratory reaction.

Reedy had maintained from the start of the tournament that they had a team who could “scare” anyone.

“We had a few close ones without getting across the line . . . today we grabbed the bull by the horns.”

Poverty Bay-East Coast’s win put them within whispering distance of 10th place.

They have 1½ team points and an impressive 10½ individual wins, just half an individual win behind 10th-placed Northland.

To move up the leaderboard, though, they needed another strong showing today against much-higher-placed teams — North Harbour (third place) this morning and Bay of Plenty (sixth) in the afternoon.

“We’ll be up against it,” Reedy said. “But we have shown what we can do. Another win is certainly not out of our scope.”

PBEC could take a little extra incentive from history.

Thirty-four years ago (1988), PBEC won the Booth Shield junior interprovincial at the Motueka course.

Heading into today, Wellington led on 3½ team points and 16 individual wins from Canterbury (3½, 15) and Harbour (3½, 13½).

The tournament finishes tomorrow.