KEY POINTS:
New Zealand golfers have rediscovered their mojo.
A swagger returned to the game in this country in 2008 after the timidity of the recent past, from the unprecedented exploits of rare amateur talent Danny Lee, onwards and upwards through the professional ranks.
Even the much-maligned Michael Campbell showed signs of life again before a quiet finish to his season forced on him by a shoulder injury.
Tim Wilkinson in the United States, a rejuvenated Mark Brown in Asia, David Smail in Japan and Australia...Lee was far from alone in turning heads.
But the 18-year-old from Rotorua tops the class for achievement, as he must after erasing one Tiger Woods from the record books by becoming the youngest player in history to win the US Amateur championship.
Lee cut a swathe through the best amateurs in the world at Pinehurst in North Carolina in August in a series of performances of such dominance that even hard bitten north American scribes were left drooling over their laptops.
Through six rounds of matchplay the Korean-born teen was taken to the 17th tee just two times, the second occasion being in the 36-hole final which he won 5 and 4 over American Drew Kittleson after helping himself to no fewer than 13 birdies.
He became the first New Zealander and just the ninth foreign-born player to win the US Amateur, which was first contested in 1895.
Lee's performance at Pinehurst was astonishing, particularly considering the final represented his 20th round of competitive golf in 25 days in the US, following a gruelling schedule which also included his maiden appearance in a PGA Tour event and victory in the prestigious Western Amateur.
His inclusion in the field for the tour's Wyndham Championship, where he earned rave reviews by finishing in a share of 20th place, was all part of masterplan to ease him towards a professional career.
He ended the year having teed it up with the pros in five events in the US and Australia, making the cut four times, with a best result of 11th equal in the Australian Masters.
By year's end he had confirmed his intention to play for pay after competing in the Masters at Augusta in April 2009, which he earned the right to play by winning the US Amateur.
That means his last memory of playing among amateurs will remain his 11-over-par 84 in the final round of the Eisenhower Trophy world teams championship in Adelaide in October.
With James Gill and Jared Pender, Lee was part of a New Zealand team who floundered on the last day, falling from a potential top-five position to a share of 11th place.
Lee's meltdown later prompted an extraordinary, public crucifixion of the teenager by Peter Williams, a novice New Zealand Golf board member and highly respected long-time broadcaster.
Without holding either Gill or Pender to account, Williams singled Lee out for stinging criticism, saying he had "dropped his bundle", casting aspersions on his attitude and saying he had "completely and utterly lost his brain".
The silence from NZ Golf was deafening. Officials were upset by the board member's outburst but the organisation made no move whatsoever to publicly distance itself from Williams' rant.
Not that Lee seemed to mind. He kept his own counsel, which said a lot about the lad's priorities - which are very much focused on the PGA Tour in 2009.
Challenging Lee as New Zealand's biggest achiever in 2008 was Brown, who reinvented himself after giving the game away for three years.
He re-emerged a toughened talent, and one good enough to pick up successive wins on the Asian Tour early in the year.
That the second win came in the tri-sanctioned, US$2.6 million Johnnie Walker Classic in India has changed Brown's life for the foreseeable future.
It earned him an upgrade in status to the European Tour for the next two years, and ultimately saw him win the Australasian order of merit, which guarantees him a start in the 2009 British Open and a potential start in the US equivalent.
Wilkinson performed consistently well on the toughest stage in the US where he finished his rookie season on the PGA Tour with tournament income of $2.2m.
He challenged strongly on the final afternoon on a number of occasions and it seems only a matter of time before the composed left-hander has a tour title to call his own.
As always, Smail quietly went about his work in Japan, boosting his bank balance by $1.15m before threatening to end a three-year drought by winning the Australian Open in Sydney this month.
Smail led by four strokes turning for home before double bogeys at the 15th and 16th holes left him looking as if he had seen his life flash before his eyes. Quite what Williams made of Smail's train wreck is not known.
While Lee, Brown, Wilkinson and Smail performed on the course, off it advances were made which augured well for the domestic game although a dark cloud remained overhead in the form of shrinking club memberships.
The plight of the clubs - many of which will inevitably face closure as their predominantly aged members visit one cemetery too many - led to considerable work being done at NZ Golf headquarters.
The upshot was a rescue package to help clubs rejuvenate their membership numbers and attract new people to the game.
The vast majority of clubs wanted nothing to do with the scheme, which suggested they were either robustly healthy or deluding themselves.
Elsewhere, anticipation grew about the first professional women's tournament to be played here in more than three decades.
The inaugural NZ Women's Open will take place in Christchurch starting on January 30, an exciting addition to the domestic calendar to complement the NZ Open and NZ PGA Championship which are both being staged in March.
The NZ Open is no longer co-sanctioned by the European Tour, which is no bad thing considering few Europeans turned up in the past three years to support it anyway.
Now, both the championship and the PGA tournament will be held back to back, each of them sanctioned by the second tier Nationwide Tour in the US and offering purses of US$650,000 ($1.19m).
- NZPA
