Golf title preliminary

Press, 1 February 1986, Page 80

Golf title preliminary

By

BOB SCHUMACHER

The Templeton Golf Club’s summer open tomorrow should serve as some sort of form guide for the Canterbury 72-hole stroke championship at Waitikiri next week-end.

The Cobra-sponsored tournament is an early event on the Canterbury calendar and many of the leading amateurs are using the Templeton 36-hole open to sharpen their form.

Missing from the Templeton field are three members of the Canterbury team whhich finished runner-up to Waikato in the Government Life

national inter-provincial championship in Invercargill last November. Brent Paterson, John Sanders and Paul Minifie, who finished third in the recent Leopard national junior tournament in Hastings, are notable absentees as are six of the province’s foremost juniors. Richard Hurley, Jason Sincock, Mark Tamuta, Warwick Sherwood, Brett Tucker and John Hazeldine are Canterbury’s representatives in the South Island under-21 championshhip at Alexandra this week-end. John Williamson and

Mark Street, two of Canterbury’s five-man team last year, have played with good success at Templeton previously as has a member of their playing four, James Angus, the Templeton open champion last year.

Last year’s Templeton summer open winner, Craig Mitchell, was originally missing from the entries, but the postponement of the event by a week, the result of heavy rain last Sunday, has enabled him to defend his title. Mitchell won the Waitikiri New Year Open

late in December. The home club has good prospects of victory through the capable Woodward Cup players, Joe Gantley, John Prebble, Neville Brightwell, Ross Jones and Finn Hobbs. Of the outside players, Paul Hansen, fourth in the Waitikiri tournament, Rick Vincent, John Craw-ford-Smith, the Waitikiri pair, Stephen Paterson and John McCormick, and the Rangiora duo, Russell Start and John Reid, both Canterbury representatives, will be looking for bold showings as a prelude to the Canterbury title.