Southland player wins match play

OPINION: The weekend featured the Otago Match Play at Balmacewen Golf Club as well as the Shirley Open at the Shirley Golf Club in Christchurch, which is a Charles Tour that features professionals as well as amateurs, writes Anthony Barkley in this week's Golf Pro.

Run during Labour Weekend, which featured some rough weather on the Monday, the Otago Match Play title went to Southland's Cody Harper. This is a real confidence builder for Cody as the team buildup for the eight-man representative trip as well as the interprovincial. This makes it interesting for the final selection on the interprovincial team, as the team has potentially four No 1s in the team. Matt Tautari played No 1 at the Triangular at Jacks Point, and, of course, Harper was No 1 many times.

Vaughn McCall has found some great form in the Charles Tour events, Matt Whitington had seven birdies in nine holes last Saturday so has some good form, and Tyler Mclain on his day can beat anyone.

Someone that has slipped under the radar this year has been McCall, due to him choosing to head up north to play in some of the big events in New Zealand, including the Charles Tour events. This is a great move by McCall, because it will give him some awesome experience, especially when he is able to play with one of New Zealand's finest golfers of all time, Sir Bob Charles, as he did last week I hear.

McCall played in the Taranaki Open as well as the Shirley Open. In both, McCall has made the top 15 and at the Shirley Open he finished fourth out of the amateurs. Mixing it with tour professionals such as Doug Holloway and Mathew Holten is great and I wish these kinds of events were around when I was playing fulltime.

It's tough for other Southland players to get to these events but there are New Zealand representative squad spots available because of diminished stocks at the top level these days. It's great to see a Southland player featuring.

Many of our younger players ventured to the Otago Matchplay and also did very well.

Kyle Dobbie carried on his good form, finishing runner-up in the intermediate section, and Sam Brinsdon also was also runner-up in the junior section.

Great results all round.

» Anthony Barkley is a New Zealand PGA qualified golf coach based at the Invercargill Golf Club at Otatara.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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