GOLF: Magical Merlin has them spellbound

ANENDRA SINGH
The feats of Merlin surrounding King Arthur's Roundtable and Excalibur are well documented in British folklore.
But there's a Merlin from Havelock North who has people on Hawke's Bay golf courses speaking in hushed tones since he picked up a three metal wood and set of irons as a 10-year-old.
He is Taikura Rudolf Steiner School student Merlin Schloemer, in fact, who on Monday bowed out 4 and 3 in the semifinal of the East Coast Open Amateur Championship at Maraenui Golf Club against Levin's Mathew Preston.
Well, okay, so Schloemer may not be quite the magician that Paraparaumu Frank Borren is - anyone's abracadabara, for that matter, is likely to lose its fizz when compared with Borren's fifth engraving on the Jenkins Cup.
Borren, who first won the title in 1976 and has been playing for yonks in the Open which started in 1933, defeated Schloemer's slayer, Preston, 3 and 2, in the final.
Like the mythical characters in King Arthur, there are many yarns floating around of the days when Borren and his brother, Jan, of the hockey fame, often camped with their father in a caravan where the Awatoto public course is today. At the weekend there were also two Borren offpsprings - Guy and Tim - in the field.
However, while Scholemer missed the opportunity to cross clubs with Frank Borren he did enjoy talking to the seasoned campaigner.
"He's been coming here a lot over the years but the next time I'll have to stop him," says a spritely Schloemer, flashing the braces lining his incisors.
"Frank's a solid player and he told me to work hard at it if I want to be successful. I'm not sure how old he is but it shows that you can play golf until you're in your eighties," says the 16-year-old who will be a sixth former this year and has thoughts about winning a sports scholarship to the United States in the hope of furthering his golfing career.
On second thoughts, the teenager has seen what Bay of Plenty highflyer Bradley Iles is doing on the Australasian circuit without a scholarship or the qualifying school for that matter, thanks to US Open champion and Kiwi professional Michael Campbell.
How Schloemer got into golf is just as intriguing as his background.
While a pupil at Havelock North Primary School six years ago, a friend, Oscar Bolderson, took him down to Sharpies Driving Range in Hastings.
Hiring a three metal wood, the two boys started to drive buckets of balls in the hope of cracking the screen of a discarded TV or a jalopy in the range for the prizemoney of $250.
"If someone was watching then you only got a lollipop," says a grinning Schloemer, who has since lost touch with Bolderso, but not the sport.
From there he graduated to the Hastings Golf Club's junior six-hole course at Bridge Pa and with professional James Morgan's (now in Taupo) tuition his 18-hole score of 130 off the stick came down to the 90s within nine months. The rest for the scratch golfer and Bay age-group representative, as they say, is history.
As for his background, Schloemer is a German who emigrated with his family to New Zealand in 1994 from Munich when he was only four.
Fluent in German, he has travelled back to Munich four times since then to meet relatives. He plays golf on the immaculate Munich courses with a friend of his uncle, Wolfgang Stelzer.
The golf courses are nicer there but Schloemer loves the Bay weather.
"Well, Munich is covered in snow this time of the year," he says when asked if he misses his birthplace.