| XDL Long Drive South Island Champs. Dec 2024. It was a fine day for the XDL long Drive competition, all be it the wind was quite brisk and a head wind, the grid was set early with the course looking fantastic, tee off was at 11:30am, we had several Nelson players competing in the event. In the lady’s exhibition matches we had Alyce Graf winning with a drive of 195 metres, in second very close was Jenny Norton, followed closely behind by Lily Broadbridge and Anita Kruger. See photo in front of Damon Motor’s car below. In the Masters we had Ben Crawford, Bryce Currie, Tony Watkins and Greg Galway competing from Nelson, after the first qualifying round there was 3 metres in it between Ben, Bryce and Tony, in the second qualifying Ben Crawford (who was using a borrowed driver, as he had broken his earlier in the day) hit a couple out to 270 metres to qualify for the Semi finals of the masters, unfortunately he lost and then lost the 3 vs 4 play off. The Masters final was very exciting with Crieg Mooney taking on the North Island Champion Andrew Storm they had both hit 5 out of the six balls and Grieg had put all 5 out of bounds, Andrew best at that point was 276 metres, but with his final ball Grieg connected and it flew to 288 metres winning the New Zealand Masters XDL Championship. In the opens event we had Jason Hylkema, Jannis Buschekle, Matthew Grimmes and Ben Crawford all trying to qualify for the finals, Mathew and Ben just sneaked into the quarterfinals as 7th and 8th qualifier, Jannis and Jason just missing out on the top 8. Matt Grimes was in front after 5 of the 6 balls in the quarterfinal when his opponent Andrew Storm hit his last ball 309 meters to just pip Matthew, Ben took on George Wardell who was the top qualifier with the best drive of the day of 329 meters almost on the ladies tees from the club house to the 18th tee (into the wind) unfortunately Ben was also eliminated in the quarterfinal. The South Island Final was won by Chris Charton beating George Wardell by 4 meters this meant that they went into a Grand final for the New Zealand XDL Champion. The winner won an all-expenses trip to the World Long Drive Championship in Phuket next year so they had all to play for. Again, it was very tight, but George just piped Chris with a 315 Metre drive to become the New Zealand Champion! Photo below. |
