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Kiwis Eddie Lee and Brad Heaven and former United States amateur champion Ricky Barnes are three prominent professionals contending with 73 fellow golfers for the final four places in the 156-strong field for the ING New Zealand PGA Championship at Clearwater this week.
The 18-hole qualifying round will be held at the Christchurch Golf Club on Tuesday with a record number teeing off in a final shot for a position in the $US600,000 tournament at Clearwater which starts on Thursday.
The growing prestige of the championship is exemplified by the increasing number of players trying to pre-qualify. For the first NZ PGA event at Clearwater in 2004, only a handful contested pre-qualifying at Coringa, but in 2005 there were 58 at Shirley and that has swelled to 76 this year.
Lee, one of Canterbury¹s favourite golfing sons, has received invites in recent years but has missed out this time. He has a ticket for the Asian tour and played in last week¹s Malaysian Open at the Kuala Lumpur Golf and Country Club, failing to make the cut by two shots after rounds of 73 and 70.
Heaven¹s professional career looked bright when, while still an amateur, he played outstandingly to finish runner-up to Australia¹s Terry Price in the
2004 New Zealand Open at The Grange in Auckland.
But the lean Auckander, who developed his golf at the University of Toledo in the United States, has not found the transition to professional player an easy one, although he made the cut at Clearwater last year and posted 68 and 67 for his middle rounds.
Fiery Barnes has had mixed results in visits Down Under in the last two years. The 2002 United States amateur champion missed the cut by a shot at last week¹s Jacob¹s Creek Open at Royal Adelaide but he carded seven-under at Clearwater last year and finished tied for 19th.
Another well-performed American, Spencer Levin, who shared the halfway lead with Ryan Armour in the Jacob¹s Creek Open, is also pre-qualifying and is teamed with former top Australian tennis player Scott Draper.
Rookie New Zealand professionals, Kevin Chun, a New Zealand Eisenhower amateur two years ago, Doug Holloway, Hamish Robertson, who won the 2005 PGA Closed Championship at Clearwater in September, Mathew Holten, and Josh Carmichael are all trying to get entry into the main field for Thursday.
The first players hit off at 7am at Shirley on Tuesday morning with the last group starting at 10.45am.
