Peter Williams: Waikato template a blueprint for success

It's been a stellar week for Waikato golf. Their top professional won a tournament in Japan, one of their best amateurs won a prestigious event in Palmerston North, the provincial association secured itself a major sponsor and then signed up the district's most popular sportsman to front a campaign to join a golf club.

A quadrella like that does not happen by accident.

It's what happens when a sport's administration is strategic, visionary and enthusiastic. Our southern neighbours have been like that for years.

Fifteen years ago David Smail might have made it into a Waikato representative team at number four on a good day. That he now overshadows former team-mates Phil Tataurangi, Steven Alker and Michael Long on the world stage is a tribute to his hard work. Last Sunday he won his second tournament on the Japan Golf Tour in the space of four weeks. He's ranked 82 in the world and is back home before his final stretch of four tournaments up there next month.

That he continues to live in Hamilton and takes a keen interest in the sport at local level says plenty about him as a person and the continuing good relationship he enjoys with the Hamilton Golf Club and the Waikato Association. Not many regional pro-ams can boost a player of Smail's status yet he willingly, and regularly, plays in the local tournament every February.

The association has supported him. Now he's prepared to do his bit for them.

And the Waikato Association continues to be a production line for New Zealand's top amateur players. The current national representatives are Mark Purser and Matthew Holten, although in truth Holten is more a product of Rotorua and Wellington.

But it was another rising star who came through at the Lawnmaster Classic in Palmerston North last weekend. Matamata's Richard Wright beat Hawke's Bay's Doug Holloway by three shots after a pair of 68s on Sunday around the classy Hokowhitu layout.

Wright, a tall left-hander, was just back from a trip to Texas with Holloway. With Holten, Holloway and Brad Iles all due to go pro in the next couple of months, Wright is set for a call-up to the first-string New Zealand team next year.

Having elite level players, in both amateur and professional golf, living in the province provides momentum for club membership numbers in the region.

Yet in a move which by golf's usually ultra conservative administrative standards is totally outside the square, a rugby hero has been engaged to encourage casual golfers to join a club.

Jono Gibbes is the frontman for a $100,000 six-week advertising campaign which starts in a couple of weeks. The 17-handicapper will be beaming from billboards and leaflets suggesting a summer membership at one of Waikato's 40-odd golf clubs. The catch cry is 'Tell 'em Jono sent ya.'

The campaign is a regional action plan to combat a national problem - too many golf courses and not enough members. It's a unique approach, although its long-term benefit is likely to be marginal until there are serious moves made to merge smaller country golf clubs.

Waikato unveiled the Gibbes campaign when they announced Bridgecorp as a major new sponsor. It was the icing on the cake in a special week for Waikato golf - playing success, high-profile promotion and sponsorship dollars. It's a template other provincial golf associations would do well to follow.