Golf: Amateur gains direct entry into Open

By CHRIS RATTUE

Amateur Matthew Holten has scored a direct entry into the New Zealand Open, and there was more good news for others hoping to qualify for this week's championship at Middlemore.

Holten joins his fellow Waikato player Brad Shilton and Bradley Heaven - who is based at Toledo University - as the amateurs confirmed in the field.

New Zealand Golf's operations manager, Phil Aickin, named Holten and Australian professional Ian Walker as the two invited players for the Open, which will have a field of 156.

Holten and Walker had been scheduled to contest the final qualifier today at the Grange, next to the Auckland Golf Club's course at Middlemore, where the Open begins on Thursday. Originally, they were chasing 25 spots, but additional places have emerged because six Australian players who were to compete at Middlemore have reached the final stage of the Asian tour's qualifying school in Malaysia.

Grant Moorhead will be among players from New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Canada, England, Korea and Japan trying to qualify at the Grange today.

Moorhead, from Taranaki, has failed to fire after being given invitations into recent Opens. He will attempt to join his 1992 Eisenhower Trophy-winning team-mates Michael Campbell, Phil Tataurangi and Stephen Scahill in this year's tournament.

The field of about 60 at the Grange also includes Jae An, who was a sensation at the New Zealand Open at Paraparaumu last year when Tiger Woods competed.

At 13, the Rotorua schoolboy, who arrived from South Korea four years ago, became one of the youngest players to qualify for an Open, and then went on to make the cut.

Another attempting to qualify today will be the 40-year-old Stuart Duff from Hawkes Bay, the former long-serving Central Districts cricket all-rounder. Duff and Co will hope to join a field that includes Matthew Lane, who won the 1998 Open at Formosa as a Monday qualifier.