Wairarapa is in grave danger of being removed from the list of venues for the Remax New Zealand Long Drive Golfing Championships.
Organiser Greg Howard, of Wellington, was 'very disappointed" at the number of entries received for Monday's regional qualifying event at the Masterton Golf Club's Lansdowne course with only six
players taking part.
"It was ridiculous?..unbelievable,' he said. "We expected a lot more interest than that."
Howard said the Masterton entries were, in fact, the lowest yet received for a qualifying competition anywhere in New Zealand with no juniors (14yrs and under) amongst them.
"We've been going three years and this would be easily the worst response we've had," he said.
Howard said he would "very definitely" be considering whether it was worth involving Wairarapa in the 2006 event
"Maybe we should just give it a miss there???..right now it doesn't look very positive,' he said.
The long drive championships are all about what the name suggests with the idea being to drive a golf ball a greater distance than any of your rivals.
For senior players six balls are purchased for $40 and they are driven up a marked fairway over a period of 2mins 45secs. The longest drive is the one which goes the farthest and stays in bounds. For juniors the cost is $20 for six balls.
A total of 14 qualifying events are held throughout New Zealand with the leading competitors in each division-open and senior men, junior boys and girls and senior women- qualifying for the national finals, which this year will be held at Queenstown's Millbrook driving range at the end of this month.
The winner of the open division national final will then progress to the world finals to be held at Navada in the United States where $750,000 in prize money will be up for grabs
Monday's regional event at Lansdowne was competed for in just two divisions with
Craig McIntosh winning the open men's grade with a drive of 259.2 metres and Serena Phillips the women's grade with a drive of 177 metres.
Winning distances for those divisions in 2004 were 278.5m (Scott Robertson) and 154 metres (Lola Ogg)
The national records are held by Matt Hogan (open men 370.6m), Pam Thompson (women 279.6m) and Tyler Mclean (junior 326.1m).
