Stewart, Brown through to NZ Amateur semi-finals
IN: News | New Zealand Mens Amateur | New Zealand Amateur Championship (2006) | Quarter-Finals | 08 Apr 2006
In-form Hamilton golfer James Gill booked a semi-final showdown against defending champion Mitchell Brown, from New South Wales, with an emphatic quarter-final win this morning against Western Australian Steve Dartnall.
The second semi-final will also be a trans-Tasman affair, with Wellington's Andrew Green playing Australian match-play champion.
Gill, 20, made a dream start to his New Zealand match-play championship game at the Coringa Country Club, winning the first five holes, two with birdies, against Dartnall, the recent winner of the Riversdale international in Melbourne.
Gill, runner-up in the recent South Island amateur and equal third in the New Zealand stroke-play championship this week, never relented. He went 6 up with a birdie at the 10th and he was three-under when victory was sealed at the 13th.
Brown, who won the New Zealand match-play final at Hokowhitu last year, was equally as impressive in downing national stroke-play champion, Won Joon Lee. Brown was never behind against his fellow 20-year-old from New South Wales.
He was 2 up at the turn and won the par-5 12th and 14th holes with birdies and the par-3 13th with a par. Lee became another victim of the jinx on players who win the stroke-play title. Nobody has won the double since Australian Bradley Hughes in 1988.
In the bottom half of the draw, Green (Shandon) upset New Zealand representative Mark Purser (Hamilton), 2 and 1. Green took an early lead and was either 1 up or 2 up for most of the front nine.
He was 1 up at the turn, won 10 with a par and 11 with a birdie and, after losing the 12th, he matched Purser over the next five holes to win at the 17th.
Tim Stewart, 21, gave himself the chance of the Australian and New Zealand match-play double in the same year by coming from behind to beat tall Queenslander Aaron Pike.
Stewart was 2 down after 12, but won 13, 14, and 16 with pars to go 1 up. He lipped out with a birdie putt to win at 17, but he put his approach on the par-4 18th to a metre and Pike, who had chipped out of trees, gave Stewart his birdie putt.
Source - NZGA
