Amelia Garvey claims the NZ Women’s Stroke Play Championship
Amelia Garvey
(Golf New Zealand Photo)
HASTINGS, New Zealand (March 26, 2017) -- Canterbury’s Amelia Garvey has produced a dominant display down the stretch to claim an authoritative victory in the New Zealand Women’s Stroke Play Championship at the Hastings Golf Club today.
The 16-year-old showed an old head on her young shoulders when the pressure went on to etch her name into the Mellsop Cup.
Despite finishing with a comfortable six shot victory over Chantelle Cassidy (Riverside Golf Club) it was anything but clear cut with four holes to play.
Starting the back nine Garvey had a four-shot lead which Cassidy immediately started to eat into with a birdie on the 10th and after Garvey dropped shots on the 13th and 14th holes, Cassidy had reduced the deficit to only two.
A wayward drive by Cassidy on 15 led to a bogey and Garvey pounced, rolling in a 3 metre birdie putt to return the margin to four.
From there she went from strength to strength hitting it to a metre for an easy birdie on the par 3 16th, before using her length to make comfortable two putt birdies on the par five finishing holes for the biggest win of her young career.
Up ahead her Canterbury team mate Julianna Hung was charging up the leader board and putting some real pressure on Cassidy for second place. She posted eight under in the clubhouse sharing second place momentarily before Cassidy finished a good week birdieing the last to finish on nine under par, relegating Hung to a commendable third.
Garvey was beaming following her wire to wire win.
“I was hitting a lot of fairways today and putting myself in good spots to attack the pins, which meant I didn’t have to do too much with my putter,” said Garvey
“It was good to get a birdie on 15, Chantelle made bogey so it was a two-shot swing which was good after making back to back bogeys. I don’t really think I sealed it till the 16th when I put it close there.”
When asked about the key to this week, Garvey was quick to pay credit to new found consistency.
“I’m getting a lot more consistent my dispersion has come in a lot in the past year and I have been working hard on the mental part of the game to not be afraid of getting low scores.”
“It’s amazing, words can’t describe how good it feels to get the job done this week. To win one of the biggest events in New Zealand is awesome.”
Garvey was looking forward to getting in touch with her parents and to what was ahead in the coming months.
“My parents are always there for the support and I can’t wait to call them, they will be stoked for me.”
“I’m heading over to aussie in a couple of weeks for the Aussie Juniors so it would be nice to perform well there and for the New Zealand team in the Queen Sirikit in May. Of course, I also can’t wait for the New Zealand Amateur at Russley in Christchurch, it would be awesome to do the double.”
In the meantime Garvey can bask in the glory of a fantastic week, where she led from start to finish putting her name alongside the likes of Lynnette Brooky, Sharon Ahn and Lydia Ko as winners of the New Zealand Women’s Stroke Play Championship.