KEY POINTS:
The Auckland Golf Association is about to make its triennial review of interclub and pennants golf. The 2007 season finishes next Sunday with finals day at Middlemore and then the association wants to find out what the format should be for at least the next three years.
I
believe there must be radical surgery. More players want to be involved in competitive golf but at the same time pressure must be eased on busy courses during the peak weekend playing times.
Currently there are four divisions. Each club can have only two teams: one to play in either the premier grade Bissett Shield or the second division President's, and one in the so-called Interclub sections, where all matches are conducted off handicap.
All teams in a particular division go to one course each competition day. During the season, which runs from February to May, every club has at least one, if not two, Sundays severely disrupted by 80 interclub golfers taking up the course for a good portion of the day. Rank and file club members get justifiably grumpy about losing their valuable tee times on the weekend.
At the moment each club can have, on any given Sunday, only 20 players involved in interclub play. The demand is much higher. When we asked for expressions of interest in January for our two teams at Akarana, over 60 players wanted to take part in trials. Other large clubs surely have similar demand.
So the number of divisions needs to be increased. The Wellington association has 10 divisions. Clubs enter as many teams as they can manage, and in the division appropriate to their ability. In Waikato there are six divisions and larger clubs such as Hamilton and Lochiel run three teams.
All serious interclub golf around New Zealand is genuine head-to-head matchplay without handicap. The Interclub divisions in Auckland are an anachronism where mainly middle-aged players on mid-to-high-single-figure handicaps often have matches decided as a consequence of who's giving who shots. Handicap matchplay is social golf, designed to be played among members of the same club. The fairest matches between players from different clubs are always played without handicap.
But if there are more divisions, more teams and more players, then the current system of bringing a complete division to one course for a day's play is no longer practical because half the courses in town would be closed on pennants day.
So each division should be played on a home-and-away basis, and the number of teams in each division restricted to six. That means five home games and five away for a 10-week season, which is not unduly long. Reduce teams to eight players and that means 16 players at a course for interclub play. That's only four tee times and they can comfortably be accommodated on a Sunday morning without upsetting club members' opportunities to play.
Former New Zealand amateur champion Rod Barltrop, who designed the very successful Wellington interclub competition about 15 years ago, reckons the ability to involve plenty of players from a young age in teams' matchplay golf has been one of the reasons the capital's provincial team has been so successful.
Auckland has had a noticeable lack of success at national level for more than decade. If administrators are really serious about addressing that issue, one thing they must do is take a serious look at how interclub golf is conducted.
