KEY POINTS:
Heavy rain that wiped out the second day's play in the NZPGA tournament at Clearwater, Christchurch, yesterday gave joint leader Matt Bettencourt plenty of time to savour a rare spell in the spotlight.
The 32-year-old from South Carolina didn't turn professional until he was 26, after playing baseball until he suffered a career-ending elbow injury.
He has only provisional membership of the Nationwide Tour after playing much of his golf in Canada.
He was one of the last starters in the first round at Clearwater, copping the worst of the conditions. But he negotiated his first nine in three under. He made the leader board with a chip-in eagle on the par-five 10th and birdies on the 12th and 14th saw him take a one-stroke lead on the field.
A double-bogey after a hooked tee-shot on the 17th brought him down to earth but he rejoined fellow American Darron Stiles and Canadian David Hearn in the lead with a birdie on the last, where he played an immaculate iron to 3m and sank the putt.
If anyone is likely to be unworried by the weather, it surely must be the Californian-born Bettencourt. Even after his double-bogey he was telling his caddie how pleased he was to be five under.
"I'm just enjoying the weather and the scenery and trying to play as many good shots as I can," he said. "I've still never had a golf lesson. I don't know what 'perfect' is. I know if you're having fun and that's perfect for me."
But like all the other contenders on the American Nationwide Tour, of which the NZPGA is the third event of the season, Bettencourt is deadly serious about getting on to the rich USPGA tour. The top 25 on the money list at the end of the season get promotion from a tour where total purses average US$500,000 ($636,100) to one where the rewards are in the millions.
Kiwi Grant Waite, with a decade of experience on the main tour, is brutally frank about his own ambitions.
"At 43 years old, I'm in no-man's-land before the senior tour and I have to do the best for my family," he said.
"My goal is to get back on the PGA tour and play at that level. If I play well in the next four or five events on the Nationwide I will concentrate on this tour to try to finish in the top 25. Otherwise I will look for starts on the main tour."
Waite points out that the expenses and travel for the Nationwide are the same as for the big tour but the rewards are much less. Promotion at the end of the year is the carrot that keeps the fields full.
Organisers of the HSBC-sponsored Clearwater event abandoned yesterday's round at 1.30pm after hours of heavy rain. That round is rescheduled for today with the top 60 and ties advancing to 36 holes tomorrow. However, more rain is forecast.
Options include a 54-hole event or even a full-field 36-hole contest if the break in Canterbury's drought becomes even more depressing for golf fans.
