Youth and old heads in quality field
%26quot;Its all a little bit difficult because teams are bringing in new players. Its an interesting balance, Id say the majority of the teams have got a pretty good balance between experience and youth.
Theres some old heads in there to give a bit of stability and guidance,%26quot; Scott told The Southland Times.
%26quot;Theres a lot of quality in the field. What they really need to feature at the top of the scoreboard by the end of the second day is some consistency with four of the five players, because its the top scores from four of the five players which count each day.%26quot; Auckland was one team with the right sort of balance between youth and experience, while last years runner-up Bay of Plenty would also bring a quality lineup to the Invercargill Golf Club despite losing Danny Lee to international duties.
Wellington and Waikato were also expected to be strong contenders, Scott said.
The Wellington team includes former New Zealand amateur champion Andrew Green and current junior international Perry Hayman.
Waikato will field two proven performers in Richard Wright and Jim Cusdin, along with Doug Millington, who had a superb season in 2007, and former Wellington representative Aaron Leech.
Defending champion North Harbour would be headed by police officer Scott Johnson, with former junior international James Davis and Scott Wightman, a member of the national academy last year.
The New Zeland womens team was also expected to be competitive, with current New Zealand womens amateur titleholder Larissa Eruera, New Zealand under-23 champion Emily Perry and Dana Kim, who was runner-up at the recent Riversale Cup in Australia.
%26quot;Its a fantastic opportunity again for our leading female players to play in this sort of elite environment.
Certainly between this event and a new concept with the North and South Island strokeplay events it gives the girls a great chance to play with the leading men,%26quot; Scott said.
%26quot;They wont be playing off the same tees as the men; that would be rather ludicrous to put them off the blue tees. Theyll be playing off the white tees, so it will be a strong test for them.%26quot; A big week of golf begins today with the DB ILT Liquorland charity four-ball tournament at Queens Park.
The pairs event starts with the first group away at 7.36am.
The Am-Am tournament gets under way on Friday before the tournament proper on Saturday and Sunday.
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