Golf: Neho retains berth in Academy reshuffle

Whangarei rising star Kadin Neho.Photo/John Stone

Whangarei golfer Kadin Neho has retained his spot in New Zealand Golfs revised National Academy for another year.

Last year Neho, who is also part of the Educare Northland Sports Talent Hub, which launched last week, shot to national recognition after being crowned the New Zealand Amateur Champion gaining selection into the National Development Squad.

This year the squad has been revised with New Zealand Golf adjusting the structure of its Player Development Programme to have one academy, made up of two tiers, to replace the previous separate academy and the development squad levels.

Neho has been named in the second tier, which is mainly for golfers who have not been consistent representatives for New Zealand.

Tier one includes frontrunners for national selection, principally with the World Amateur Team Championship to be staged in Japan in September in mind.

"The reason for this is to focus attention, time and funding on a smaller group of players at the elite and pre-elite level, while broadening our approach to the development of emerging junior aged players," explained Gregg Thorpe, the High Performance Manager at New Zealand Golf.

New Zealand Golf staged a camp for the National Academy this week at the St Peters Golf Academy in Cambridge.

In other local golfing news, Whangarei Boys High School claimed their fourth straight Northland Secondary Schools Golf Tournament title.

Boys High's winning scores came from Julian Fowler (76), Ben Bowmar (76) and Christian Nitsche (78) while Braden Keown (79) had a non-counting score.

Whangarei Girls High School followed their recent win at the Eagles College Tournament in March by winning the team net medal prize.

They were lead by Shanice Croft-Kemp who also claimed the girls individual gross honours with an even par round of 73. The boys individual gross title went to Kerikeri High Schools Taylor Gill who birdied the last hole to finish at one over par 73.

Individual net medal winners were Chris Shepherd, of Boys High with 67, and Danielle Ngakuru, of Tauraroa Area School with 75.

The winning school qualifies for the National Final at Taupo Golf Club in September.