GOLF - Why it's goodbye to hit and hope for Caroline

Caroline Bon has been meaning to get back to the Waiotira Golf Club, where she swung up her first golf club in anger, to teach the rugged rural course a lesson, but has struggled to find the time. It might be a while longer before the Northland golfer gets back there to give the club record books a scare now though. Northern Advocate sports editor Tim Eves reports.
NORTHLAND'S talented 22-year-old Caroline Bon has just been named in the New Zealand women's golf team, the first Northlander to win full national honours.
So casual rounds of hit and hope at the Waiotira Golf Club are no longer on the menu.
Bon has much bigger fish to fry, starting with the Australian Amateur Open at the Royal Adelaide Club next week, then the New Zealand Amateur Open in Wellington the week after, a tournament that is quickly followed by the Transtasman Cup in the same city.
It is a hectic schedule, but one Bon is primed to tackle.
The buzz of getting a phone call from the New Zealand golf selector David Graham to tell her she had just been picked for the New Zealand team is going to last a while.
"It was an awesome call to get, I was like yahoo, it was a strange feeling but a good one," Bon said.
"I had been aiming at getting in this team but I had no idea when it would happen, but suddenly it has happened all at once," she said.
Bon finished fourth at last month's Australian foursomes and makes a major jump into the senior team after her breakthrough performance to win the South Island Amateur at Invercargill earlier this month.
That is the official take on her selection. Bon thinks her form has been steadily getting better for a year, since she made a decision to play more top grade tournaments.
"I played like about 100 more tournaments than I did the year before and it just started to make a difference. When you play against the best girls on quality greens all the time you just get better," she said.
But as she has leap-frogged up the rankings to win national honours, Bon has not forgotten where it all started. The course at the Waiotira Golf Club was an unforgiving environment for any golfer and it taught her a few valuable lessons.
"I have been meaning to get back there and play some golf. Learning there was the best thing, because when you got in the rough there you had to be strong to get out of it, so when I am in the rough now it's like, this is rough, this is nothing," she said.
The second Transtasman Cup will involve 16 players from New Zealand and Australia, combining the junior men's Clare Higson Trophy, the senior men's Sloan Morpeth Trophy, the women's Junior Tasman Cup and the senior women's Tasman Cup.
New Zealand won three of the four individual battles in the inaugural event in Canberra last year, but lost the overall Transtasman Cup on the final green of the final match by just one point.
New Zealand are hoping for an equally exciting battle when they host the event for the first time.