Golf: Conflicting demands weaken tradition

Professional aspirations and different priorities are taking a toll on some of the traditional amateur events in this country.

For the past 54 years, one of the premier amateur events has been the interprovincial teams' championship, with the best players vying for places in the five-man teams from the provincial districts.

But some of the gloss has been taken off the six-day event in recent years by a number of factors.

First, older players tended to be deterred by family commitments as the game was dominated by youngsters who seemed to do nothing but play golf. On the other side of the coin, those youngsters who did take school or university seriously had exam commitments.

Adding to these problems this November is the fact that the tournament at Titirangi clashes with the Australian Open and some players with professional aspirations in the near future fancy their chances of making the field.

This weekend Auckland, Bay of Plenty, Northland and Waikato field 10-man teams in the Garrard Shield at Lochiel, Hamilton, in a final trial for the interprovincial tournament from November 22.

Auckland will have none of the five who represented the province in last year's interprovincial at Napier. Logan Holzer is taking a break from representative play, Ross Valentine is overseas and Chris Saunoa and Matthew Cormack are not in the frame.

But Auckland administrators have been disappointed by the absence of last year's No 1, Kevin Chun, and one of the form players this season, Travis O'Connell, who have opted to try to qualify for the Australian Open.

Who can blame the young players? They both have professional ambitions and last year, when there was no clash, they both made it into the Open field, Chun by virtue of winning the Tasmanian amateur title and O'Connell by winning the qualifying tournament from a field of seasoned pros and amateurs.

And in the tournament itself O'Connell missed the cut by one shot, while Chun made the cut and finished in 57th place, eight shots ahead of Michael Campbell.

Their absence has opened up opportunities for others. Leighton James, who will play at No 1, won the Auckland matchplay title, beating Chun, and both he and Grange clubmate Jason Mann have performed strongly in other tournaments.

Waikato won the Garrard last year at Remuera, but were beaten by Bay of Plenty in the interprovincial final. Guy Penrose and Brad Shilton have since joined the paid ranks but Mathew Holten and Mark Purser are national representatives and Richard Wright has just won the Manawatu 72-hole event.

James Gill will be missing at Lochiel because of university exams but will be in the frame for Titirangi, while Jim Cusdin and Martin Burger have the chance to step up.

Bay of Plenty, chasing their fourth interprovincial title in a row, have Josh Geary, Mark Smith and Jason McIntosh available from last year's victorious team. Terry Hong is back in Korea and Jae An has won a place in the Australian Open.

One ready replacement is Eddie Burgess, who won the national amateur title at Christchurch five years ago and has returned from the professional game. Young Danny Lee is a strong challenger from the Rotorua Boys High talent factory.

Northland have also lost out to the paid ranks with No 1 Alex Tait chasing success on the links to match his exploits on the cricket field. Jeremy Hay takes over at the top of the order.