KEY POINTS:
There's always a special satisfaction when a team for which you're partly responsible has a significant success. Auckland's win at the SBS Invitational in Invercargill was the best rep result for three years.
As selectors, our task was reasonably straightforward: Van Wright, Leighton James, Seve Ha and Ryan Fox picked themselves. We went for Maungakiekie's Ben Davies as our fifth man because he'd played well in the Grant Clements tournament and he went to Invercargill last year.
The national teams' strokeplay championship demands consistent performance from all five team members. The best four scores in each round count and, in one of the best all round-team showings in the history of this event, 19 of the 20 rounds by the Auckland players were between 71 and 76. Sure, Davies blew out to 82 in the horrendous winds of the final round, but then 22 of the 64 players had scores of 80 or worse.
Auckland's success was based on Wright, James, Ha and Fox finishing the four rounds within a shot of each other. Wright and James, with a 72 hole total of 293, were 4th equal in the individual standings, Fox and Ha tied for 7th a shot back. But the fifth man played a significant role - Davies had an even par 72 in the second round and a counting 75 in round three.
The Invercargill Golf Club's Otatara layout is tough in the wind. After a relatively calm first round, there was a demanding west or southwesterly. Sunday was bitterly cold and at one stage play stopped because of a hailstorm.
So conditions, and the tight tree lined course, demanded patient, intelligent golf to get rewards. That was something coach Stu Thompson impressed from the outset. Thompson, once a touring professional and now a full time PGA coach, knew how to win the tournament - he was part of a winning Wellington side (he thinks Michael Campbell was in it too) in the late 1980s.
The decision to send Thompson as the team manager was deliberate. The usual form is for a member of the blazer brigade to be manager.
But we felt that was the old-fashioned way and Thompson proved ideal.
On Saturday evening, while other teams had a beer Thompson took his team back to the practice range to warm down.
It was then I thought these guys would do the business on the final day. They began the third round three shots behind Waikato, and then the final 18 holes five adrift of Bay of Plenty. But as every other team lost their heads in the wind, Auckland won comfortably by seven shots. The blue and whites were the only team under 300 in final round, and Wright's 71 was one of only two sub par fourth rounds.
After last year's mishaps, lets' hope the win in Invercargill is the start of a new chapter for the Auckland representative team.
