Golf: Teens wreck tent at Taranaki Open

Teenage international amateur golfers Riki Kauika and Josh Geary have wrecked a sponsor's tent during a drunken escapade after the Taranaki Open early last month. New Zealand Golf has been sent a repair bill for $1500.

The 19-year-olds were drinking after the four-round tournament at the New Plymouth Golf Club's Ngamotu links. After most other players, officials, sponsors and guests had left the Taranaki Open Kauika, of Wellington, and Geary, from Mount Maunganui, damaged the 18th green, then began swinging from the framing of the Yamaha golf cart company's sponsorship tent until it collapsed.

According to Yamaha's Bob Menzies the pop-up style tent was "extensively damaged".

"Taranaki Golf told us to send the bill to New Zealand Golf which we've done."

New Zealand Golf Chief Executive Larry Graham says the players were given a "verbal dressing down" and the incident "was dealt with in-house."

But Geary and Kauika, along with Auckland's Kevin Chun, left for the Eisenhower Trophy in Puerto Rico a little more than two weeks later.

Graham says Kauika is now "on notice."

In Malaysia in May, Kauika and another top amateur Brad Iles used a toothbrush belonging to Chun in an inappropriate manner. The next morning they slept in, missed their tee times and were disqualified from the tournament.

When the toothbrush incident became public two weeks ago it was reported Iles and Kauika had been banned from representing New Zealand overseas for the rest of the year.

Graham says while that's not correct, neither player will be allowed in a New Zealand team unless a manager travels too.

"We need a change of culture. These kids get everything, equipment, balls - the lot. But now we're going to get tough. We have to educate them on how to represent New Zealand and, it seems, on how to behave," Graham says.

But some New Zealand Golf councillors are furious at the lenient attitude shown after the toothbrush incident in Malaysia.

The councillors, who represent each of the country's provincial associations, want harsher punishments handed down.