NEWS

Weekend Preview 9^th February

Attention this week will focus on the Oates Victorian Open, with 10 New Zealand players in the field, and the AT & T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on the PGA Tour where all 3 of our Tour players will tee it up.

Back home, the Legends Tour starts a huge week at the Tokarahi Golf Club near Timaru this Saturday.

Oates Victorian Open

This $A 500,000 tournament has a unique format, with both the Men’s and Women’s Victorian Opens being played concurrently at the 13^th Beach Golf Club’s Creek and Beach  courses.  Michael Long won this last year, and there are 9 other NZ’ers in the field: Brad Shilton, Josh Geary, Michael Hendry, Fraser Wilkin, Ben Campbell, Mark Brown, Gareth Paddison, David Klein and Harry Bateman.

Michael Hendry has been putting in plenty of time at the new Wainui (formerly Peninsula) Golf Club’s facilities, including taking on the whole club in a special challenge round last weekend.  It seems to be paying off: Hendry was -5 part way through Round 1, well up with the leading bracket.

AT & T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

An iconic tournament going back to the days of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope on the PGA schedule, this combination of celebrities and the Tour’s top professionals has been the forerunner for other Pro-Am tournaments, and is always an intriguing event.

The tournament is split between Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill and Monterey for the first 3 rounds; those making the cut play the final round at Pebble Beach.

Tim Wilkinson tees it up with Ernesto Bertorelli (of America’s Cup fame) at Pebble Beach in Round 1; Steven Alker is at Spyglass Hill, and Danny Lee has an intriguing partner in Peter Ueberroth, who is a former Commissioner of Baseball, and who was CEO of the 1984 Olympics at Los Angeles.  In 1999 he teamed up with Arnold Palmer and Clint Eastwood to buy the Pebble Beach course, so clearly he has some entitlement to play in the Pro-Am…

Perhaps he can provide some inspiration to Danny, who needs to get a good result under his belt soon, in the lead up to the key events ahead.

European Tour

This week’s event is the Maybank Championship, co-sanctioned with the Asian Tour.  As a consequence, a decent chunk of slots go to Asian players, and so Ryan Fox does not make the field.  He will no doubt welcome a week at home before he takes off to Perth for the following week’s ISPS Handa Perth International.

Legends Tour hits South Island

A large contingent of Legends Tour players have arrived in the South Island to play four tournaments culminating in the NZ PGA Seniors Championship, for a total of $84,000 in prize money.

The circuit starts at the picturesque rural Tokarahi course inland from Oamaru.  Known as “The little club that can”, this unique nine hole venue will be hosting its 3^rd Legends Tour event

The players then head north for The Mainpower Pro Am (supported by Lamb & Hayward) at Rangiora.   

Next Tuesday we will see Russley’s hosting of their first Legends event.

Russley has hosted many prestigious tournaments and visitors over the years. In the 1960’s and 70’s the Wills Masters and Garden City Classic professional tournaments were hosted at Russley on 12 occasions. Players including Peter Thomson, Kel Nagle and Bob Charles were regular competitors. Other famous names who played Russley at that time were the three Toms: Watson, Weiskopf and Kite.

In 1985 the NZ Open was held at Russley, won by Corey Pavin and in 1990 the Women’s World Amateur Team Championships (the Espirito Santo) was hosted here. Russley continues to host prestigious national events, the most recent being the New Zealand Amateur Championships in 2011.The event will be showcased by guest attendee John Lister who had many successful and notable rounds at Russley in the 1970’s and 80’s. Although not playing, John will lead an evening function the night before the event. It is expected that many of the players will be playing the new layout at Russley for the first time.

The following three days will see the largest tournament of the series The Ramada Inn NZPGA Seniors Championship for $40,000 in prizemoney. Play is one round at Bottle Lake and two rounds at Waitikiri Golf Club.

The field of Professionals aged 50+ is expected to have some highly ranked players who have been competing on the European Seniors Tour , such as Mike Harwood, last year’s winner Tim Elliott, as well as  NZ’s  Pettigrew.   Past winners of the event have included Rodger Davis, Tim Elliott, Simon Owen, Terry Gale, Peter Fowler and Gary Merrick.