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Gulf Harbour Country Club has earned promotion to play in the region’s top division, the Frank Nobilo Pennants competition, after winning the second-tier West Coast Pennants competition and then beating Waitakere Golf Club in a promotion-relegation match.
Gulf Harbour last won the West Coast division in 2012 and then spent two years in the Nobilo division before being unable to field a team in 2015. Promotion back into the top division is a feather in the cap of the club.
The West Coast Pennants competition, which ran from February to April, featured teams from nine clubs, including Whangaparaoa, Warkworth, and Omaha Beach, that competed over nine rounds, in match play – a system where the score is determined by how many holes you win, rather than how many strokes you take to complete the 18 holes.
At the end of the round robin, Gulf Harbour, Redwood Park, South Head, and Warkworth went forward to the semi-finals, where Gulf Harbour beat Warkworth, and Redwood Park beat South Head to progress to the final.
Gulf Harbour earned the right to play the final on their home ground because they finished the round robin in top position. They used it to their advantage, comprehensively outplaying Redwood Park in the final.
Five members of Gulf Harbour’s West Coast Pennants team played in Wainui Golf Club’s Nobilo team last season, so there was an expectation that they would do well. And they did, dominating the competition. The team played a total of 80 individual matches during the West Coast competition, winning 64. The top performers were Matt Switzer-Josephs, who won nine of his 10 matches, veteran Reg Fleet, who won all eight of the matches he played and Nathan Mayes, who won seven of the nine matches he played.
The final challenge was a knock-out match against Waitakere Golf Club, as the bottom-ranked Nobilo team. It was played in wet and windy conditions at Waitemata Golf Club in Takapuna on May 12. After nine holes, all eight matches were still close but Gulf Harbour ended by winning six matches to gain promotion.
