The Captains team were at Akarana early on Sunday morning to meet Pakuranga in their semi-final.  Andrew Millard and Paul Teamoke led the team off and both established an early lead in their matches.  Andrew stumbled in the middle of the round but fought back and an excellent par 3 on the tough 16th hole set up an excellent 2/1 win.  By this stage Smokey had well and truly closed out his match with a 6/5 win over his opponent, he was -1 at the stage the match concluded.  A great start with 2 wins in the bag!

 

Unfortunately Rod Downs and Tom Ritchie met 2 opponents playing very well.  They were down for most of the match and kept it going as long as they could before both losing 3/2.  2-2 after the first 4 matches.  From early on this always looked like it was going to be close.

 

Chris de Bruyn, playing  at No.4 got out to an early lead and although his opponent fought back to level it up midway through the back nine, he finally took control winning 16th and halving 17th to win 2/1.  Rakesh Patel was down for most of his match and was beaten 3/2.  Six matches completed and 3-3 - couldn't be closer.

 

Both Manu Taylor and Mathew Weir were ahead for large parts of their matches but both of their opponents fought back to level the matches after 14 holes.  The final holes went like this:

15th - Manu a win to go +1; Mathew a half to stay all square.

16th - Manu a loss to be back to all square; Mathew a half - still all square.

17th - Manu a bogey to lose & -1; Mathew a bogey to lose & also -1.

18th - both Manu & Mathew won the final hole to get both matches back to all square.

 

So the final result was 4-4, which you would think would result in a play-off, but NO.  Consultation with Auckland Golf and the ruling was that the winner would be decided on the result of the round robin match which tipped it in favour of Pakuranga as they beat us 5-3 earlier in the year.  A disappointing end to a great match overall thoroughly enjoyed by all the players and played in great spirit.  We wish the Pakuranga team the best of luck in the final at Remuera on Sunday.