Golf: Direct entry to British Open beckons

Aucklander Brad Heaven will join 36 others at Kingston Heath near Melbourne next Monday to compete for a place in this year's British Open.

The 36-hole international qualifying tournament offers the top four players direct entry to the 134th Open at St Andrews in July.

Similar tournaments are staged in the United States, Europe, Asia and South Africa. Local and district qualifiers are also held in Britain.

The final field will be 156, with about 100 exempt players.

Heaven, second in the New Zealand Open at The Grange last year as an amateur, missed out on winning his card for either the European or US PGA Tour and will rely on invitations to the New Zealand Open at Gulf Harbour and the NZPGA at Clearwater.

The only other player with New Zealand connections trying for the Open field at Kingston Heath is 45-year-old Peter Fowler. The Australian, who lives in Auckland, won the New Zealand Open in 1993 and plays on the European tour. He has played in the British Open eight times.

Meanwhile, five Kiwis are already in the field for the A$2 million ($2.2 million) Heineken Classic at Royal Melbourne from February 3.

Michael Campbell, Gareth Paddison, Mahal Pearce, David Smail and Richard Best qualify through exemptions on the Australasian side of the tournament, which is jointly sanctioned with the European tour. Steve Scahill may qualify through the European quota and others have the chance to advance from pre-qualifying.

Terry Pulman, the only player in the last 40 years to win back-to-back New Zealand amateur matchplay championships, is the incoming president of the Auckland Golf Association.

The Grange player won at New Plymouth in 1976 and retained the title at Russley in Christchurch the following year.

In 1982, he was a member of the team that won the national foursomes crown at Manawatu, and they retained the title at Titirangi in 1983.

In recent times Pulman has been manager of national teams to major international tournaments, including the Eisenhower Trophy.

Michelle Wie is a star in her home state of Hawaii whatever she shoots on the golf course.

So when the tall 15-year-old took on the men of the US PGA Tour in the Sony Open, she was cheered on by big galleries of locals. In the event, she shot rounds of 75 and 74 to miss the cut by six shots.

Pretty good for a teenager, you might think. But just to show how fickle golf can be, the PGA website extracted some statistics comparing her performance last week with her effort a year earlier when she missed the cut by one.

Last year her driving average was 250m when the rest of the field averaged 256m. This year her average was 244m against a field average of 251m. So she lost nothing there.

The difference clearly came on the greens. Last year she averaged 27 putts a round against 29.78 for the field, but last week she needed 31 against the average of 29.78.

Wie holed a putt of over 4m on her first hole of the tournament this time, but that was her last over 3m. A year ago she holed seven over 3m. Which suggests that whatever your age and sex, you drive for show and putt for dough.