Northland golfers teed up for season-ending interprovincials in Christchurch

New Zealand representative Luke Brown will lead the Northland men's team at Toro New Zealand interprovincial competition next week.

The Northland men's and women's golf teams are putting in the practise to prepare for the season-ending Toro New Zealand interprovincial competitions starting next week in Christchurch.

The men's competition will feature 15 provinces from around the country and runs from November 26-30 at Clearview Golf Club. The women's team will play at Waitikiri Golf Club from December 4-8 and their event contains 14 provinces.

Teams consist of five players and a reserve. The five players will face the same ranked player from another province over 18 holes and the team with three wins takes the victory.

"The end goal is to go down there and claim the silverware," men's team captain Brad Bonnington said.

"A lot of the guys were there when we made the semifinals in Invercargill three years ago and that was our best performance in recent years.

"I'd say with the experience we have, we'd be hoping to go all the way and that's certainly something we've been talking about over the last couple of weeks."

Bonnington said the team was strong with the inclusion of New Zealand representative Luke Brown and Dale Clarke, who won the Australian Mid Amateur competition in South Australia this month.

"Having those two back and Dale being in form, that's good timing. It's probably the most experienced team ever, I assume. Everyone on the team has been on the Northland team for a long time."

For both teams, only Clarke has played their respective courses before and with forecasts predicting plenty of rain and wind, golfers will be in for a tough week negotiating the conditions.

Women's team captain Kylie Jacoby said the team was excited to get down there and show what Northland had to offer.

"We've got a good team, a mixture this year of players that have come back into the team and then ones that we had last year so a bit of experience."

Jacoby said they hoped to improve on last year's fifth placing, the best Northland women had achieved in years.

"If we can hopefully stay there or get better that'll be good. The competition is getting tougher and tougher and teams are getting younger and younger."

She said they didn't have many matches throughout the year and the team aspect of the tournament was unique.

"You're not only thinking about yourself but you're also thinking about your teammates so it's a whole different atmosphere."

Golf Northland executive officer and men's team assistant manager Vaughan Witten said this was a major tournament for all the provinces.

"It's our big one really. I'd be happy with a top-five finish. That'd be a pretty lofty goal but the Northland women played really well last year and so did the men."

He said it was an important tournament for golfers who wanted to make an impression on representative selectors.

"We want to do well in everything Northland competes in but I guess this is our Ranfurly Shield of our golfing calendar for our representative golfers. This is the one they all want to get to and are working towards getting selected for so it's always a big thing."

The men's team first face Hawke's Bay on Monday at 8.40am and the women's team start with Hawke's Bay/Poverty Bay at 8.05am on Tuesday the following week.