Golf: Bay of Plenty early tip to take interprovincial golf title

Big changes in team personnel make the annual national men's interprovincial golf tournament, which starts near Invercargill today, the most open in years.

But the feeling at the Otatara course yesterday, as the golfers played a final practice round, was that Bay of Plenty would be the team to beat.

The Bay have never won the Tower tournament in its 50-year history but have twice been runner-up in the past five years. The big plus for them is that they have four members of the team beaten by Wellington in a cliffhanger final in Hamilton 12 months ago.

And those same four, led by New Zealand champion Eddie Burgess, were in the Bay of Plenty team who finished fifth in the Southland Invitational at Otatara last March.

Wellington, Auckland and Canterbury, usually the teams to beat in the, bear little resemblance to their line-ups of last year.

Jonathan Cane is the only survivor from Wellington's winning team in Hamilton.

Auckland refused to select their best player, Chris Johns, because he is playing with a brand of ball which conflicts with officials' wishes, and their only survivor from 12 months ago, Geoff Sisson, is up from No 5 to No 1, and Canterbury have only Eddie Lee and Isaac Randall from last year's side.

- NZPA