True to his origins

GOOD WIN: David Solomann chalked up another impressive victory in Poverty Bay-East Coast’s narrow team loss to Tasman at the Freyberg Masters yesterday. Picture by Paul Rickard

GOLF

ONCE Gisborne, always Gisborne.

David Solomann would agree with that.

The Poverty Bay-East Coast “player of origin” chalked up another impressive victory for the province in a narrow team loss on Day 3 of the Freyberg Masters men’s interprovincial in Timaru.

PBEC were pipped 3-2 by Tasman in Round 5 of the week-long over-40s matchplay tournament.

Auckland-based Solomann, known as “Solly” to his mates, provided the only individual win — a hard-earned 1-up defeat of Mark Le Compte in a battle of the No.5s in the five-man team format.

Pete Anderson, at the top of the order, ended his run of four defeats with a half against David Riordan.

PBEC No.3 Simon Jeune also shared the spoils with Corey Taylor.

No.2 Tony Akroyd lost 3 and 2 to Glenn Drummond and No.4 Anaru Reedy lost 2 and 1 to Blair Bavin.

Solomann, 43, left Gisborne a good number of years ago but not before making his mark in golfing circles.

The former Gisborne Boys’ High School student produced a stunning win at the 1995 Poverty Bay Open as an 18-year-old and played interprovincial golf for the district at junior and senior level.

Now a father of two, he lives in Auckland where he works as the IT infrastructure manager for national wholesale food distributors Bidfood.

Yesterday’s win was Solomann’s third of the week. He hit the ball “pretty good” in a tight match in which he showed mettle when the pressure intensified.

Anderson also responded well late in the round when he needed to.

He has an unenviable position at No.1 against some top names of New Zealand’s golfing past.

Against Riordan — a prominent golfing name — Anderson made an up-and-down from nowhere to halve the 16th hole, and sank a nervous three-footer on the last to square the match.

Jeune showed his fighting qualities in coming from 2-down with three holes to play for a half.

Anderson’s half meant all of the “starting five” have had a positive result on the scoreboard over the week so far. Team reserve Pete Stewart has played just the one match, which he lost.

Anderson said the team had taken a couple of rounds to warm up but were hitting their straps and looking forward to this afternoon’s clash against North Harbour.

Only one round was played yesterday and PBEC had a bye this morning.

As of yesterday afternoon, they were sitting 12th-equal out of 15 provinces.

Wellington were the overall leaders but had played one more round than second-placed Bay of Plenty and third-placed Canterbury.