Sloan team starts with a narrow loss

Our Sloan Trophy team fell just one win short of sharing the honours with Motueka in the opening round of the inter-club competition played at Murchison on Sunday (Feb 9) in sunny and still conditions.

In the end, Motueka – one of the competition favourites – edged us by 3 ½ to 2 ½ and also picked up another 3 points `for the win.

Warwick King playing at No 6 provided one of the individual highlights in winning his match 7/6 and doing so in style by hitting 81 off the stick, his first sub-90 round. The 22-handicapper started with a birdie two and was just two over par at the turn due to some excellent chipping and putting to blow his opponent away.

His fellow junior Lewis Wilson was three up early but got run over by his rival who shot a nett 61. Despite shooting a nett 66 himself, Lewis lost 2/1.

No 4 Jonathan Tuheke fought hard in a close tussle and played to his handicap but couldn’t get his nose in front and finally succumbed 1 down.

Steve Russell also played to his handicap but was 3 down at the turn and lost another couple of holes soon after in a 5/4 defeat.

No 2 Keri Kotua struggled early and was one down after 10 but made three birdies in a row on No 11,12 and 13 through some great putting to seize the initiative and go onto win 3/2 with a 73.

The match between the No 1s Peter Watson and Mike Inwood was always tight with Peter one up at the turn before Mike got it back to even stevens. Peter then birdied two on the bounce to lead by two with four to go, but made a couple of errors to let Mike back into the match. They both had long birdie putts on the last but missed to square the match. Both shot 74 off the stick.

Warwick and Keri were among those who scored twos.

In other results, Nelson beat Golden Downs 6 ½ to 2 ½, Totaradale defeated Tasman 7 to 2 and Greenacres and Takaka drew 4-all.

We play Murchison at Golden Downs in the next round on March 1.