KEY POINTS:
Scott Johnson, captain of the North Harbour golf team, earned himself an early wedding present when he won the North Harbour strokeplay title in a dramatic three-hole play-off yesterday with Auckland's Ryan Fox.
On another windswept day on the North Shore course the pair finished level at 220 for 54 holes, four-over par after a seesaw battle that also involved Jacques Nortje (Muriwai), who finished third one shot back, and Travis O'Connell (The Grange) and Ben Jujnovich (Redwood Park) another shot adrift.
The play-off hole was the 147m par-three ninth, where Fox had wasted his overnight three-shot lead with a six in regular play. He seemed certain to redeem himself when he was about 2m from the flag with his tee-shot on the first playing of the hole in the play-off only to miss his putt. He was just as close next time round and shaved the hole.
The third time he went through the green from the tee, saw his pitch roll off the front and his third shot run back. He finished with a six and Johnson won with a bogey four.
Johnson, an Auckland-based policeman who will be married in two weeks, had fired a final round of par 72 and took the lead for the first time on the 16th. But he suffered a cruel blow on the 17th when he almost drove the par-four but found his ball embedded in the lip of a bunker and dropped a shot to fall back into a tie with Fox and O'Connell.
O'Connell, who had led with nine holes to go, lost his chance when his recovery from a tight lie on the 18th flew through the green and he took four more shots for a double-bogey finish.
The best round of a well-run tournament was the 70 shot by Auckland's Ben Wallace on Sunday afternoon. That effort sandwiched between an 82 and an 80 and he finished well back.
