Fresh look to Tasman team for SI interprovincial
Next month’s annual South Island interprovincial tournament in Invercargill heralds a virtual changing of the guard among Tasman’s top golfers.
Tasman’s leading player for several seasons and New Zealand Eisenhower representative Ryan Chisnall is no longer available for Tasman selection as he pursues his dream of turning professional. And that’s given new selector Sean Riordan plenty of challenges ahead of this season’s representative programme.
Riordan was one of New Zealand’s leading amateur players for a number of seasons and a former Tasman No 1, so he’s well aware of the challenges facing what is essentially a young and inexperienced eight-man Tasman squad leading into the South Island tournament at Otatara on November 11-12. Tasman’s eight-man squad, in playing order, includes Nick Ludbrook, Sam Nichols, Brook Hale, Dale Rutledge, Kam Clarke, Connor Winter, Josh Simpson and Andrew Drummond and regardless of the team’s relative inexperience, Nichols, Drummond, Hale and Clarke all played for Tasman at last year’s Toro tournament in New Plymouth.
Blenheim’s Blair Bavin was also in New Plymouth and is unavailable for Invercargill but will come back into contention for this year’s final Toro selection.
‘‘They’re pretty inexperienced as a team but they’re also pretty fearless and have quite a lot of ability,’’ Riordan said. ‘‘So as long as they can display those kind of features then the experience will come.’’
Riordan admitted that the old guard of Tasman golf had virtually disappeared.
‘‘There’s a few more younger guys coming through. We’re at the point where there’s quite a lot of us [more experienced players] that have been and gone, so we need to try and build that [player base] back up again and give these guys a bit of an opportunity and get a bit of experience under their belts.
‘‘I guess that’s the main objective of this team and then we’ll go from there with regards to how they want to pursue their goals. There’s a few others like the Zohrabs [twins David and Thomas] who would have been playing but their focus is on cricket so we just have to give guys who really want to play golf a chance.’’
Josh Simpson is also a talented cricketer but has opted to test himself at provincial golf level, at least for the early part of the season, and impressed Riordan at the recent triangular tournament at Greenacres.
‘‘I watched Josh with the [Nelson] reps out at Greenacres and he was very good under pressure and he wants to pursue his golf a little bit more, so that’s why I’ve given him an opportunity to display that.’’
Nick Ludbrook is now comfortably the team’s most experienced player and with a handful of Toro interprovincial tournaments already behind him predictably slips into the team’s No 1 position. And although young, No 2 player Nichols is steadily gathering experience.
‘‘He’s one of those guys that could just hit a switch at any time and get to the next level so again we’ll give him the opportunity do so. With the selection of [Marlborough’s] Dale [Rutledge], he’s a pretty fierce competitor. All those boys from Marlborough have got that bit between their teeth and do a really good job in a matchplay situation.’’