By Bob Pearce
Local champion Blair Dibley beat some of the best amateur golfers in New Zealand to win the Auckland strokeplay championship at Akarana yesterday.
The 28-year-old had a 72-hole total of 285, one over par, to beat Rotorua teenager Mathew Bluett by one shot with New Zealand representative Carl Brooking
(Christchurch) a further shot back in third place.
Watching closely were the national selectors, who will choose a four-man team to compete in the Asia-Pacific championships at Lahore, Pakistan, in early October.
As well as Brooking, they would have been looking hard at fourth-placed Gareth Paddison (Manor Park) and Bradley Heaven (Remuera), who finished fifth after shooting 67, the best round of the tournament in the final round.
The quality of the opposition made Dibley's win all the more meritorious. After 54 holes he was level with Paddison, but three shots adrift of another Akarana player, Brent Fabish.
Fabish faded with a 79 in the afternoon and Dibley, Bluett and Paddison were tied for the lead with nine holes to go.
The left-handed Paddison's chances evaporated with four bogeys in the last six holes, but Bluett almost forced a playoff when his explosion from a greenside bunker hit the pin but stayed out.
Dibley, a regular Auckland representative, kept his cool and calmly two-putted for the win.
His rounds of 72,70,72 and 71 were a measure of his consistency on a course in remarkably good condition, but whose hard greens spooked some players.
Among the national representatives who struggled were Reon Sayer (Manor Park), who started with a 69 and then faded with 78,73, 76, Eddie Burgess (Tauranga), who started with a 77, and Chris Johns (Auckland), who had a second-round 80.
Dibley will play number three in the Auckland team to meet Wellington in Taupo next weekend.
The team is: Johns, Heaven, Dibley, Logan Holzer (Grange), Nigel Davis (Remuera), Fabish, Clark Osborne (Grange), Geoff Sisson (Pakuranga), Mark Pirihi (Akarana) and Richard Griffin (Howick).
