Once again the 5 Golf Clubs within our Eastern BOP met up for the annual challenge to determine

bragging rights as “Best in the Bay”.

This year the host club was Ohope and a fine day greeted the field of 90 players who turned up in

support of this popular event.

Each Club was entitled to enter a team of 8 Men & 4 Women whose combined total Stableford

scores would be used to decide which Club would take away the trophy as “Best in the Bay” and be

the winner of the $1000 Team prize again sponsored by the Golfer Pacific Gazette.

Players in this tournament always enjoy the opportunity of mixing with their fellow golfers from the

other Clubs and as usual there was plenty of good natured “sledging” comments about the merits

of each others golfing abilities.

Although the Club's are each out to win the trophy sometimes there is difficulty in having enough

players available on the day to make u p a team and in this case one Club only had 1 male player

turn up to represent them I'm sure the women members of that Club will be sure to mention this

when they return home! Fortunately the gaps in this team were filled by players from host club

Ohope though needless to say, these players were somewhat surprised to find [after they had

finished] that they had been playing for another club much to the amusement of their fellow Ohope

members.

Usually the host club players have an advantage playing their

home course but on the day Opotiki

led by their captain Hamish Maxwell and supported by a strong contingent of junior players were

the winning club with a team score of 427 points.

Ohope were not far behind with 422 points although their selector's team c

hoices caused some

raised eyebrows as some of the their best players scores went to other clubs!

Whakatane came home 3

rd with 410 points, then Te Teko with 401 points and Kawerau with 383

points.

Best of the Individual Results as follows:

Glenys Hayes [O

potiki] had the best score of the women with 41 pts on a countback from Janet

Kerr [Ohope], then came Zandra Hahipene [Te Teko] & Gail Stables [Opotiki] both with 40 pts.

Men's 1

st Division winner was Matt McKeown [Kawerau] with 40 pts on a countback from Hamish

Maxwell [Opotiki], they were followed by Kyle Bond [Ohope] & Ron Lavender [Kawerau] both

with 38 pts.

Men's division 2 was taken out by Lindsay Kerr [Ohope] with 41pts, followed by Jack O'Neil

[Opotiki] & Neil MacDiarmid [Kawerau] both with 39 pts. 4 th place went to Ross Lang [Ohope] on

38 pts

A great day had by all and we can look forward to next year at Opotiki.

Franz Wetzel

Facilitator