Golf: Auckland hurt chances of win

Auckland will go into a challenging finish to the men's interprovincial golf championship at Otatara in Southland today wondering how expensive an untidy finish to their fifth-round match yesterday will prove.

Auckland have been playing catch-up since losing to North Harbour in the first round. They made up ground with two big wins on Wednesday.

To continue that momentum, they needed to beat Taranaki in yesterday's sole round, but manager Terry Pulman was disappointed that a likely 4-1 victory became a 2 1/2-2 1/2 halved match.

That left Auckland precariously in fifth place and needing to beat Otago and Bay of Plenty today.

"It was clear in the morning that we would have to win both our final matches, but now we will need help from other teams," Pulman said.

Southland marched majestically on in front yesterday, beating Poverty Bay-East Coast 5-0 to total four points and 17 1/2 individual wins.

Bay of Plenty beat Tasman 3 1/2-1 1/2 to be second on four points (14 wins), followed by Canterbury (3 1/2, 13 1/2), Wellington (3, 12 1/2), Auckland (2 1/2, 13 1/2) Tasman (2 1/2, 12) and Otago (2 1/2, 11 1/2).

The winners for Auckland were Franz Schwanner and Logan Holzer, and they could easily have been joined by team-mates Clarke Osborne and Aaron Bartrum.

But Osborne bogeyed the last four holes to lose two down to Bryan Martelletti, and Bartrum double-bogeyed the 18th to turn a one-up win into a half with Joshua Kearns.

Bay of Plenty had their moments against Tasman, none more so than their No 1 and New Zealand matchplay champion, Eddie Burgess.

He ran into a red-hot Glyn Delany, who made seven birdies in winning 8 and 7.

Delany is a talented 21-year-old, who feels his ability has not been fully appreciated by the New Zealand selectors, and he was delighted to finish Burgess off with a two-metre birdie putt in front of the national panel.

The Bay got some valuable assistance, however, from Jason Laing, who was three down against James Gardiner after nine holes, but won the 12th, 13th and 17th, and dodged a bullet at the last when Gardiner's birdie putt lipped out and the match was halved.

The Bay No 2, Kent Skellern, with 11 consecutive wins behind him, was three up after 10 holes against Matt Pussell, but was all square at the 16th.

Skellern got out with a cheeky win when Pussell's drive bounced off the backside of a Bay of Plenty supporter and skipped away behind some trees.

From there, Pussell made bogey as Skellern scored a comfortable par to win one up.

Waikato put some life into their campaign with a half against Canterbury, Northland beat Hawkes Bay for their first win, and North Harbour ended a winless run with a 5-0 victory over Aorangi.

- Herald Correspondent