Peter Williams: Giant Leeper cruises to Mid-Amateur Championship

As the Baby Boomers and the generation before them have aged, New Zealand Golf has done well to ensure plenty of top level competitive opportunities for the older player. It started in the 1980s with the New Zealand Seniors Championship (50 and over) and the Freyberg Interprovincial Masters for those 40 and over.

The national body went one step further in 2003 with the first New Zealand Mid-Amateur and the fourth tournament for those 30 and over was at Pukekohe last weekend. This was the first Mid-Amateur played in the Auckland region, so the event had the largest and best field to date. There was a current New Zealand team player in Dean Sipson and former national representatives Glen Goldfinch and Michael Barltrop. There was a swag of past and present Auckland, North Harbour, Waikato and Bay of Plenty rep players too but the sunbaked and unwatered Pukekohe fairways meant scoring, especially in the two qualifying rounds, was generally unimpressive.

To make the top 16 and play for the championship, the cut was 154, or 12-over par, for 36 holes. The average score in the first round was 81 - and the highest handicapped player in the field was on five. I'll confess to being above average in that first round but found in the second round that if you leave the driver in the bag when the fairways are bouncy and unpredictable and play irons off the tee instead, you score a lot better.

The championship division was littered with big names - Sipson, the winner in 2003, Goldfinch, triumphant in 2004, and defending champion Martin Tumata. But, when matchplay starts, forget the form book and forget history.

Goldfinch went in the first round, Sipson in the quarter-finals, Barltrop and Tumata in the semis. The final was between Manukau's Matt Laird and Michael Leeper of Warkworth. Laird played for Auckland at the interprovincial tournament last November but has hardly been in vintage form since. Until last Sunday, Leeper was a player with little reputation outside his own club and I'd only met him before when he thrashed me in the division two plate at last year's Mid-Amateur in Rotorua.

But Leeper proved the giant killer of the weekend. He whipped Barltrop 6&5 in the semis and then made four birdies in the first six holes against Laird before dispatching him 5&4. Previous winners of this tournament have gained direct entry to the New Zealand Open but Tumata hasn't been able to use his privilege yet because of the change of dates for this year's Open. So he'll play at Gulf Harbour this November and Leeper has to be content with direct entry into this year's final qualifying and take his chances from there.

The increase in player numbers this year - from about 60 to just under 90 - suggests the concept of a Mid-Amateur is catching on. It's an event designed to give slightly older players a competitive experience in an era when most top amateur tournaments are dominated by teenagers and those in their early 20s.

The reality is that most of the field last weekend was over 40. The game at all levels is not flush with 30-somethings. They are too busy having families and paying mortgages.

For the first time in four Mid-Amateurs, there were no South Islanders either. The distances involved make that understandable.

But next February the tournament is at Wairakei. The venue alone should make it the biggest Mid-Amateur yet.

-HERALD ON SUNDAY