Top women’s golfers will converge on Ashburton next month for the New Zealand women’s masters tournament.
More than 50 women aged 40-plus will compete for the interprovincial team event, run by Golf New Zealand and this year hosted by Ashburton Golf Club from April 10 to 13.
Club pro Matthew Davis said the tournament gave the Ashburton club a chance to showcase how good the Brandon Course was to players further afield.
“It allows all these really top golfers from around New Zealand to come and see a country course, not a city course, and showcases how good our country courses are,” he said.
“A lot of people say our (18-hole) course is better than most courses in Christchurch because of our greens, how smooth they are, and how well they run.
“Our fairways are nice as well so they’re very good to hit off, and how well manicured and maintained our courses are.”
Davis said the women’s masters was not the first time the club had hosted a national tournament. In 2021 it hosted the New Zealand men’s interprovincial tournament and years earlier, the national women’s interprovincial.
It was a credit to the club and its Brandon Course that it could host such top tier events, he said.
Davis said hosting national events had proved beneficial for the club, which has around 570 members.
“We have had interprovincials here before with the men’s tournament a few years ago. We’ve hosted the junior tournaments here too with the under 21s and under 19s, under 16s national tournaments.
“(After) people have been here they talk about it, and then all of a sudden you get players from the North Island coming to play golf here,” he said.
The club had seen some big weeks in green fees as a result, he said.
Tournament preparations were well under way with head greenkeeper Josh Burrows, and part-timer Nick Knight, and superintendent Ben Crequer carrying out course maintenance.
It included scouring, sanding, core sampling and reseeding.
Davis said the condition of the course was a tribute to the greenskeepers passion and efforts, helped by club member volunteers.
“We have a good greens committee and it does take a lot of volunteer work from our members to help out the greenkeepers, since we only have three, to get a full 18-hole course into this position.”
Davis said while maintenance work was carried out on the greens, golf trials were well under way to find representative players for the Aorangi Golf team.
