Ohope are the Best in the Bay!
Players testing the slick greens before competition started
EBOP Interclub Golf Challenge
Father’s Day 2019 dawned bright and clear promising the best of conditions for this year’s Eastern Bay of Plenty Interclub Golf Challenge.
The sunshine brought out a number of late entries on the day and this gave the starters a mammoth job trying to sort out all the groups for a Shotgun start. The delay in tee-off however was taken in good spirit and it was great to see the many greetings between friends from the different clubs who had not caught up with each other for quite a while.
The Challenge attracted a good attendance with 77 men and 33 women making for a field of 110 all out to support their club in winning bragging rights as “Best in the Bay” and of course win for their club the valuable Team Prize sponsored by Golfer Pacific NZ magazine.
Host club Whakatane had their course in pristine condition with the greens smooth and fast following on from the recent Bay Open Tournament. This provided plenty of challenge for the players with many a putt seen to roll on that extra bit past the hole!
A few individual players conquered the course and recorded good scores and so featured on the leaderboard. Best of the men [Div 1] were Flash Gordon [Kawerau] and Ian Bartlett [Ohope] with 40pts, followed by Micky Huriwaka [Opotiki] with 39 and then Daniel Robb [Ohope] on 38. In Div 2 men, top scorers were Loki Moore {Opotiki] and Terry Bowe [Ohope] with 40pts, next was Gary Pellett [Ohope] on 39 and followed by Alby Oakes [Kawerau] on 38. For the women, best on the day was Trish Eilbreck [Whakatane] and Janice Hustler {Opotiki] both with 36 pts, then Alison Barr {Whakatane] and Polly White {Opotiki] with 35pts each.
However the day was all about the Club Team score, with each club’s captain having to nominate their team players before play commenced, and as is usually the case, some of the best performers were not selected in their club’s team!
The Club Team score was an aggregate of their men and women scores with Ohope Club coming out top with 347pts, closely followed by Whakatane & Opotiki both with 345 pts, next was Kawerau with 343 pts and Te Teko with 333 pts.
Ohope Golf Club’s Captain for the day, Ian Bartlett was very pleased to be handed the trophy by Ali Barr on behalf of host club Whakatane and to receive the team prize of $2000 of green fee vouchers sponsored by Golfer Pacific NZ.
Next year’s host for this popular event will be Ohope Golf Club and now as holders of the Trophy they will have a big task ahead to defend it. However in the meantime, they can enjoy their next 12 months with bragging rights to being “The Best in the Bay” !
Ian Bartlett receives trophy from Alison Barr