GOLF: Three aces!

Most golfers wait their entire life to hit a hole in one but in just her second year of playing Petrina Maddren has well and truly scratched that off her list of things to do.
She's knocked down three aces in three months - each of them on the same hole.
The 112m par three first hole at the Whangaroa Golf Course has been kind to Maddren, who modestly maintains that her three aces there - one in May, one at the end of June and one at the beginning of July - were down to luck.
"It's just lucky really, there's not a lot of skill involved ... the first two didn't have a whole lot of air time in them but the last one was a perfect shot, it landed a metre in front of the hole, hit the pin and dropped," she said.
She was understandably estatic in each case, although by hole-in-one number three her joy was tempered by a sobering thought.
"It came to me that I was going to have to put lots of money on the bar," she laughed.
She tested her luck by buying a Lotto ticket but discovered her good fortune was restricted to the golf course.
Maddren has only been playing golf for just over a year and said the first tee is one of the only places she's able to hit the ball straight.
Whangaroa club manager Graeme Thomas said to his knowledge there had only been one other hole in one struck on the first hole in the last five years.
"There have been some others spread around the course but it's pretty unique to get three on one hole, especially in that short amount of time," he said.
The achievement has certainly made Maddren a minor celebrity on the course but Thomas said she is being too modest about her game.
"She hasn't been playing for long but she's already a fairly tidy golfer ... as the president here says, he's been playing here for 20 something years but he's never had a hole in one."
The golf ace and her husband, Garry Foster, run a dairy farm near Oruaiti and it was through Foster that she got started in the game last Easter.
"My husband plays so I decided to join him rather than sitting at home by myself. My son Bradley is a member of the club so the three of us like to go out together."
She said she had never been very sporty at school and only decided to start playing when her son started school last year, giving her some free time.
The decision certainly seems to have paid off and Maddren has lowered her handicap to 24.2 in that time.
She tries to play twice a week if she can, on Ladies Day on Wednesdays and for a club haggle with her husband on a Thursday.
"It's a good club to play at, the people are all really friendly and it's quite social," she said.
But like the rest of the Far North, the club has taken a hammering in the recent deluge.
"We're down to a nine-hole course at the moment. Some of the bridges got washed away during the flood, so they've shut the front nine and are just using the back nine until they can get the bridges back working again."