Golf: Hawkes Bay aims to exploit its home town advantage

Experience will count at the national interprovincial men's tournament starting in Napier today, says Hawkes Bay coach Brian Doyle.

And he should know, based on his own experience as coach of the Hawkes Bay team over a number of years and more recently with the New Zealand Eisenhower Trophy team who played at the world amateur championships in Puerto Rico.

Experience with the course conditions, experience from playing previous interprovincials and, apart from young Supravee Phatam, the experience of having all played at No 1 for the province would be crucial, he said.

"I'd say that we are full of hope and quietly confident," he said.

"And if local knowledge counts for something, then the boys all know this course pretty well. We're probably one of the most experienced sides here and if that counts for something, then great."

As the home team, Doyle said his side would face a number of distractions during the week.

"As I've said to the boys throughout the last few days, 'have the best of intentions but let's go the outcome'."

By that Doyle said he meant concentrating on each shot and keeping the ball in play was the most important thing to remember.

He agreed that two-time defending champions Bay of Plenty and the perennial contenders from Waikato had strong line-ups.


f his time with the Eisenhower Trophy team had taught him one thing, it was that a number of the younger amateurs could lack maturity and life skills, which was something he would endeavour to exploit this week.

While they all had beautiful swings and were great ball strikers, he questioned some of their course-management skills, which would be well and truly put to the test in a matchplay format, he said.

The teams are split into two sections, with top seeds Bay of Plenty in section one with Manawatu-Wanganui, Wellington, North Harbour, Hawkes Bay, Tasman, Taranaki and Southland.

The other section features last year's runners-up Waikato, Canterbury, Auckland, Northland, Aorangi, Otago and Poverty Bay-East Coast.

- NZPA