Sports stars to descend on Te Puke for Pro-am
GOLF
Five days of top-class golf at Te Puke Golf Club will start with a sports-star-studded Celebrity Pro-am Tournament next Wednesday.
The club is hosting the NZPGA from Thursday until Sunday next week, but stars of cricket, league, sevens and 15-a-side rugby will be the drawcards at the Pro-am.
All Blacks Damian Mckenzie and Anton Lienert-brown head the list, with sevens stars Brad Webber, Scott Curry and Sam Dickson also set to take part.
From the world of league there are former Warriors Ben Matulino and Blake Ayshford, while cricket’s representatives include Neil Wagner, Dean Browlie and George Worker.
Club manager Bevan Jackson says a lot of the stars already play at the course.
‘‘We look after them so this is them doing us a favour,” he says.
The Celebrity Pro-am has a shotgun start at 10am on April 28.
The Pro-am is a chance for the community to head along to the course and see the stars of other sports. Bevan says it is probably a good day for golf fans and general sports buffs to come along. ‘‘It’s smack in the middle of the school holidays and we are looking at doing some signing sessions afterwards, so people can come along and see [top golfer] Ryan Fox and see some All Blacks and sevens players.”
For the NZPGA itself, hole 12 has been designated the party hole and Bevan says the club is looking at a family zone.
‘‘That’s what we are looking at but we only have limited space because a lot will be used for parking, and we’ve got to make sure we do it safely,” he says.
While preparations for hosting the prestigious tournament are well under way, there are still a few pieces of the jigsaw to slot into place. ‘‘A lot of it now is getting enough volunteers. The PGA wants to do live scoring and they want to do stats . . . which [requires] pretty much two people per group, which soon blows out.’’
The NZPGA will be covered live on Sky Sport on the Saturday and Sunday. ‘‘That’s all confirmed. They are going to do the 12th hole, which is the party hole, then the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th. It will be cool for it to be live on Sky.”
An innovation for the 2021 NZPGA is a teams competition run in conjunction with the tournament for the Rohe Trophy.
While there will be provincial teams, Te Puke will have its own team of club professional Jared Pender, and fellow professional and European Tour player Josh Geary.