A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Waka Donnelly doesn’t need to be reminded of when he last won the Poverty Bay men’s open.
He knows only too well it has been 10 years since he joined the late Eric Gordon as the second-most prolific winner of the district’s flagship men’s golf tournament.
One more Keiha Cup crown will take him to eight and draw him alongside Gordon’s elder brother Frank as the most successful player in the history of the 89-year-old championship.
It would come 31 years after his first at the age of 19 and a couple of months after his 50th birthday.
First things first.
Former Gisborne man Donnelly, now living in Napier, tees off in a 112-strong field in the 85th edition of the Emerre and Hathaway-sponsored PB Open at the Awapuni Links, starting tomorrow morning.
Ahead of them lie 36 holes of strokeplay qualifying on the one day, followed by four rounds of sectional matchplay over Friday and Saturday.
For the guns, the first part of the challenge is to make the championship 16.
What 36-hole total that will be depends on several factors, including the weather and how the players handle a golf course being developed for the New Zealand Amateur in November.
That means some pretty gnarly primary rough and quick greens expected to be made even more challenging by strong winds.
Last year’s cut-off was 157. The 16th and last spot was filled by former professional Richard Wright, who is back as part of a powerful Matamata contingent hungry to go one better than 2019.
Wright, brother Andrew and Tim Neill were all in the championship 16 last year.
Neill went on to make the final, knocking out Richard in the semis, but then came up against an impregnable force in home-course player Simon Jeune.
In a superlative-producing display, the 56-year-old Jeune blew Neill away 5 and 4.
Looking to join grandfather Warwick (1959) and uncle Mark Neill (1972, 1979, 1986) as a PB Open champion, Neill could only stand back and admire the performance.
To fall at the final hurdle was disappointing but he told The Herald yesterday he had not stewed on it.
If anything, his reflections were positive. It was his best showing at the Open and an exceptional display by an opponent who had three times tasted defeat in the final.
It also fuelled the fire to return this year and if he himself can’t do the job, he is confident the brothers Wright can.
Neill, who plays regularly with Richard, said he’d been putting in the prep and was “looking dangerous”, while Andrew was showing “a bit of tournament form”, including a strong finish to the Cambridge Classic.
As for Neill himself, he was runner-up at the Tauranga strokeplay series and last weekend competed at the North Island men’s strokeplay in Whakatane as part of his PB Open build-up.
An outsider getting his hands on the title, however, will have to negotiate a local minefield, along with history.
It has been seven years since lefthander Bruce Wilson returned to Kinloch with the silverware.
Since then, it has stayed in Gisborne. Included in that run have been two titles apiece to Andrew Higham and Peter Kerekere.
This year, though, there is a great chance of it heading several blocks down the road to Electrinet Park.
Anaru Reedy, the lowest-handicapped player in the district, is in tomorrow’s field. The former New Zealand Maori champion shifted from Poverty Bay to Park this year and has been cleaning up. His successes include the senior men’s club championship crown last weekend.
Higham is back for another crack and fronts the home-course challenge alongside Jeune and 2012 Open winner and 2020 King of the Coast winner William Brown.
Kerekere and 2018 champion Pete Anderson - who recently met in the senior men's final of the Poverty Bay club championships, Kerekre winning - are notable absentees.
Patutahi has a quadruple threat in 2007 PB Open champ Tony Akroyd, brothers Eddie and Hukanui Brown, and Dwayne Russell.
Donnelly still has strong ties to the district so is regarded "a local".
Auckland-based David Solomann, who won it in 1995, is also returning home to where he learned his golf, and should not be discounted.
Nearly half the field are from out of the district and the drop in Covid-19 alert level is perfectly timed.