Golf: Fun in a champions' nursery

JO-MARIE BROWN finds Rotorua Boys High School has joined a private company to further its winning ways with golf.

Rotorua Boys High School may already hold national and international golf titles but it's not resting on its laurels.

Instead, the school is building its own driving range and putting complex to help further its reputation as a place that nurtures golfing talent.

Holes one and 18 in it are replica models of the student's favourite greens at Royal County Down in Ireland and the Berkshire Golf Club in England, where the school's team won world titles in 2000 and last year.

Principal Chris Grinter said the 15-lane driving range and 18-hole putting facility, designed to provide tournament green speeds, will open next month as part of the school's golfing academy.

"We want to further develop our position as one of the world's top golfing high schools," Mr Grinter said.

Students from Fiji, Thailand, Korea and Japan, as well as some home-grown talent, have already enrolled at the school because of its golfing reputation.

The school has twice won the World Intercollegiate Golf Championship and taken home the New Zealand secondary school's title three years in a row.

The new facilities are a joint venture between the school and Tiger Target Golf Ranges, which is building and financing the $240,000 project.

Permission had to be given by the Ministry of Education as the development involves Crown land being used by private enterprise.

"The Minister of Education is also the Minister of Sport, so it's a combination that we were hoping he would see very positively and that's how it turned out," Mr Grinter said.

The driving range and greens will be used by all students in physical education and recreation classes.

For the school's "elite" golfers such as Jae An and Sam Hunt they will be an extra training facility.

"I'll use it at lunchtime or before school," said Jae An, the fourth-former who recently became one of the youngest golfers to ever qualify for an open tournament when he joined Tiger Woods at Paraparaumu in January.

Mr Grinter said a professional coach would run the facility and video and computer equipment to analyse golf swings would probably be installed next year.

The public would be able to use the complex but it is not your average mini-golf course.

None of the greens have concrete sides that players can rebound balls off and the uneven surfaces are expected to make holes-in-one rare events.

Mr Grinter said the complex would be used to help attract more students to the school and to teach existing pupils how to play a "respectable" round.

"It's part of our strategy to not only grow golf but also to create a culture of success within the school."