Rain inundates golf championships

Cook Islands junior golfers have had mixed performances at the 36 holes Auckland Age Grade Golf Champs over the weekend.

Young Willie Howard, the only competitor to come close to the leading players, scored a 77 in the first 18 holes and 80 in the 2nd.

The two time winner of the Auckland Champs and leading New Zealand junior player Sam An scored a 72 and 76 to take the Auckland champ for the 3rd year in the row.

Atrocious rain, wind and cold weather played a major role in the competition and local players couldnt handle the conditions and were at times putting three or four times on the green because of water hazards.

Tournament marshalls had to work overtime to find dry spots on the green to enable players to place and putt to the holes.

Results in the one day 36 holes tournament were Tony Turua (84/90), Jojo Karati (87/92), Leo Roa (88/93), Teariki Smith (99/88), Karika Karika Jnr (94/96) and Winston Kiria (104/110). Despite the high scoring results management was satisfied with the effort by the team in comparison to some of the other players who pulled out half way through the competition due to the atrocious weather conditions.

In general I was happy with the results considering that most of our players results were placed in the top 20 out of the 120 players in the tournament, says team manager Anthony Turua.

The team will now move to the Whitford Age Grade Tournament where a large percentage of the players from the Auckland region will participate. The team will expect further showery conditions on Thursday and Friday competition and strategise to compact the weather condition for better results.