Weekend Preview 9th
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 13th 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 3rd 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.
Finally, the circuit concludes with the $15,000 Lamb & Hayward Bottle Lake Senior Pro-Am - a great effort for one of our smaller clubs to host two days of professional golf.
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.