Peter Williams: Teenage talent hung out to dry

The pettiness which too often afflicts women's golf has stooped to new lows with the non-selection of Auckland's best player for the national interprovincial tournament early next month.

Natasha Krishna, who has just turned 17, this year played for New Zealand in the triumphant Tasman Cup team and at the Queen Sirikit Trophy. In the last six months she has won the New Zealand under-21 championship and the national secondary schools tournament.

Her problems with the Auckland selectors began last month when she initially made herself unavailable for an interprovincial quadrangular tournament because she had been invited by Vijay Singh's brother Meera to play in a PGA-sanctioned event in Fiji. She would have been the only female in the tournament, which was subsequently won by Grant Moorhead.

The higher quality of the competition there would have benefited a promising woman player. But when she realised the Fiji tournament meant missing not only the quadrangular but also the important North Shore Women's Classic, she withdrew.

Naturally she informed the Auckland selectors that she could now play in the quadrangular. They said the team had already been selected. Fair enough - but one missed tournament is not the end of the world.

The selectors then insisted that all prospective representative players take part in the Auckland women's championships. That sounds fair and reasonable except that this tournament was played on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday during the school term. Natasha Krishna, as a Year 12 student at St Kentigern's College, needed to be in school for an English seminar which was crucial to her gaining an NCEA English pass.

For a young woman who has ambitions to go to a US university on a golf scholarship, academic results are important too. Krishna admits she has missed scheduled training sessions with the Auckland squad, because of either national team commitments or meeting school assignment deadlines.

So mainly as a consequence of not playing two tournaments the selectors insisted were compulsory trials, the city's top woman player is not part of the five-strong Auckland team for the interprovincials starting October 4 in Ngaruawahia.

Her reasons for not playing either event are entirely valid. Therefore the Auckland selectors, in the wider interest of Auckland and New Zealand women's golf, should have shown some flexibility and common sense.

Understandably, recently appointed high performance director for New Zealand Golf Gaylene Eyre is far from amused. She held a similar role with Women's Golf New Zealand and was a key figure in the improving results of the New Zealand women's team in the last two years. But she feels powerless to interfere in the affairs of a provincial association.

The best way for elite players to maintain and improve standards is to have consistent, high-quality competition. There aren't enough good women players in this country anyway and to have one of them missing from the most important national team tournament of the year for reasons of spite is just ridiculous.

The decision to leave Krishna out for Ngaruawahia is unlikely to be reversed. She's bitterly disappointed and disillusioned by the attitude of Women's Golf Auckland.

If things go to plan, she wants to start a scholarship at an American university in January 2007 but wants to play at the highest level here until then. Auckland's administrators have let her down.


- HERALD ON SUNDAY