Golf Vic Vol 60 No 3 2019

Victoria’s state teams earned more glory in 2019, with the men scoring an extraordinary victory to take a third straight Interstate Series crown and the girls’ team winning the Junior Interstate Series for the third time ever. MARTIN BLAKE reports. Victoria’s men made it three in a row at Golf Australia’s Interstate Teams competition in Hobart, yet it was anything but a cakewalk. In fact, the fifth Big V triumph in the past six years came in remarkable circumstances with a halved final and a rarely-used method of separating the finalists – Victoria and New South Wales – brought into play. Along with the victory of the Victorian girls in the Junior Interstate Series in Toowoomba a few weeks earlier, it made for a productive year for the state teams. The girls, captained by Piper Stubbs and inspired by the unbeaten 15-year-old Keeley Marx, won for the first time since 2015 and only the third time ever. But it was the men’s win at Tasmania Golf Club that was the big talking point, clinching the first hat-trick for a Victorian men’s team since 1929-31. Victoria’s status coming in was potentially problematic, with David Micheluzzi (the unbeaten superstar of the 2018 team) unavailable and 2018 captain Zach Murray’s decision to turn professional making it a much different team. Throw in the change in management, with Matt Cutler as Head of High Performance and Dean Kinney as VIS head coach, along with Darren Cole taking up the role of tournament coach, and there were many unknowns. The Victorians beat South Australia, Northern Territory, Tasmania and Queensland in the round robin but lost heavily to New South Wales, 5-2, leaving the Blues as firm favourites to win overall. What happened next goes into the annals of the event: NSW ‘blew’ their top seeding with a final-round defeat at the hand of Western Australia, losing 5½-1½ with a reshuffled team and their number-two player, Nathan Barbieri, sitting out. As Victoria and NSW stepped up for the eight-player Friday final, though, not everyone knew that the seedings had panned out as they had, with Victoria at number one and NSW at number two. Even the Victorian players were told that to take the title, they would need to win the final. The teams were tied on five points overall and also level on 28½ individual points. “I didn’t even know until we had two of our players hit off in the final,” Cole said. “We went into it telling everybody that we needed to get four-and-a-half (points).” In fact, NSW and Victoria needed a further statistical layer to be parted. That came down to points scored by the respective number one players, which had Victoria just ahead 3-2½. Victoria had pinched the number one seeding and hardly anyone knew. “When we had the same overall points and individual points, I presumed that it would then go off the head-to-head result,” said Cole. “But it didn’t. That ended up being the deciding factor because the whole final was very even.” Indeed it was. NSW and Victoria halved at 4-4 in the Friday afternoon final, a match that was tight all day until Victoria’s number one player, Darcy Brereton, beat his opponent at the 18th hole to give them the four points they needed. The rest of the Victorians were around the green at the par three, save for Matias Sanchez who had just beaten Josh Armstrong in the number three match and was sprinting up the hill to the hubbub. NSW won the first three matches to start, with Jye Pickin beating Konrad Ciupek 3&2, Lucas Higgins triumphing over Aiden Didone 5&4 and Harrison Crowe pipping Lukas Michel 2&1. At the top end, Victoria’s The Victorian girls team moments after winning the Junior Interstate Series in Toowoomba, (from left) Kay Bannan, Piper Stubbs, Imogen Jones, Sheradyn Johnson, Tiana Wanigasekera and Keeley Marx. Golf Victoria 7