Golf: Solo task for rising star

By BOB PEARCE

Bradley Iles, twice a world title winner with the Rotorua Boys High School team, faces his biggest individual challenge in the semifinals of the New Zealand amateur championship this morning.

The 18-year-old, now based at the Manor Park Club in Wellington, will play experienced Australian Marcus Fraser over 36 holes on the Auckland Golf Club's Middlemore course.

The other semifinal pits another 18-year-old Kiwi, Eddie Lee from Christchurch, against Bronson LaCassie, a 19-year-old Queenslander whose father comes from Papakura, 15km down the road from Middlemore.

Iles was third in the strokeplay championship last year at Mt Maunganui, but by his own admission has struggled a little for form since moving to Wellington in February for coaching from Mal Tongue and to study psychology at Victoria University.

Yesterday morning, he had to go to the 19th to beat Australian Gavin Flint. He began his quarter-final against strokeplay champion Brad Shilton in spectacular fashion with three birdies in the first four holes to be three up.

But from then on it was a rollercoaster ride before he clinched the win 2 and 1 on the par-five 17th where he rifled a low five-iron to the green for what became a conceded birdie when Shilton found trouble to the left.

Fraser, who is from Melbourne, won a tight match with New Zealand No 1 Tim Wilkinson two up.

The two have battled before in strokeplay when Fraser won the individual title at the Asia Pacific in China at 19 under par, two clear of the lefthander from Palmerston North.

Lee, acknowledged as No 2 to Wilkinson, birdied the first extra hole to beat the feisty Nelson player Glyn Delany.

Lee - with Phil Williams, brother of Tiger Woods' caddie, Steve, on the bag - was one up with a birdie on the ninth but hardly found a fairway or a green in regulation after that.

Trouble was Delany could not nail his birdie chances and Lee gave a master class in recovery play.

On the 19th he won the match with a 6m putt after reaching the green from a fairway bunker.

LaCassie accounted for fellow Australian Marcus Both 4 and 3 after never being seriously threatened.

But in the semifinal Lee will have the edge in experience over the older Australian.

The semifinals will start from 8am and the 36-hole final tomorrow at 9am.

After the final, the New Zealand selectors will name a five-man squad from whom the three-man world amateur team will be selected.

Wilkinson and Lee are certainties and the other three should be Shilton, Rotorua's Sam Hunt and Mathew Holten from Te Aroha.