GOLF - Northland's future in good hands

Northland junior golfers proved themselves tough opponents at the recent junior interprovincials at the Cambridge golf links.
A team of 10 golfers, made up of six under-19s and four under-16s, went down to the Waikato to make their mark against some of the up-and-coming talent in New Zealand golf.
The team had a difficult start to the tournament, playing the competition's toughest teams over the first two days but they were anything but sitting targets.
They started out with a 7-3 defeat at the hands of hosts Waikato, who eventually finished third before suffering a narrow loss to eventual tournament runners-up Bay of Plenty 6-3.
They then went down to North Harbour in their biggest defeat 2-7 but bounced back in the afternoon to give the eventual champions plenty of grief before losing to Auckland 3-7 in a closely-fought match.
Some of the losses were indeed closer than they seemed the team's selector Graeme Hill said.
"A few of those matches went to the 17th and 18th holes but as seemed to be normal for us last week, we found ourselves the wrong end of those games."
The worm turned for Northland after that and they claimed three victories in their remaining matches against Hawkes Bay (5-4), Poverty Bay (9-0) and Manawatu-Wanganui (6-3).
The wins saw them climb to six points - level with Manawatu, but on a countback the central North Island team had won 1 more games than Northland to pip them for fifth place.
Still the Northland side had the moral victory with the defeat over Manawatu - who had a strong side who beat Waikato 7-3.
Josh Clark-Steedman, playing at No.5, was one of only five players in the entire tournament to go through unbeaten with five wins and two halves during the week.
"Of this team, only one of them won't be able to attend the tournament next year and that means we'll be stronger than ever by then - so the future looks good and hopefully next year we'll be able to knock over one of the big teams at least - maybe even two," Hill said.
That was unless new talent comes up through the ranks - something that is also a possibility in a region where golf is relatively strong.
The two "newbies" in the Northland team showed they were pretty quick on the uptake at the Cambridge tournament.
"The two young boys Joshua Barnes from Kerikeri and Sean Masters from Kaitaia did very well in their first tournament for Northland, particularly since they're both just 13," Hill said.
Maybe they'll prove to be giant-killers next year.
The team was (in ascending order): Sean Masters, Joshua Barnes, Reece Mist, Thomas Corbett, Brett Robinson, Josh Clarke-Steedman, Lee Newman, Mitchell Price, Gavin Brown, Alvin Rapana.