Report – Carpet Mill Men’s Pairs – Birkenhead – by Lindsay Knight

In the other major tournament at the weekend, the Carpet Mill Birkenhead men’s invitation pairs team from the Auckland centre took the major prizes.
  
The championship final, and with it first prize of $1600 went to Royal Oak’s Martin and Kevin Dixon, who beat noted greenkeeper Brendon Kelly, playing for Pringle Park, and former Black Jack Neville Hill, from the Auckland club, who received $800.
 
In third place, and winning $275 each, were the beaten semi-finalists, Takapuna’s Garry Banks and Dennis Hale and another Takapuna player, Grant Keats, who led for Royal Oak’s Nill Whitburn.
 
Takapuna’s Brent Malcolm and Bevan Smith won the championship A flight from Logan Clark and Shane Drabble, from Manurewa Cosmopolitan. The other quarter-finalists were Birkenhead’s Daymon Pierson and Jimmy Heath and Browns Bay’s Brian Wilson and Jean Viljoen.

As with the women’s fours at Manly, Saturday’s high winds made conditions difficult. But there was a high standard of play with a full entry of 32 teams from clubs in North Harbour, Auckland and Counties.
 
An intense competition was shown in the number of top players who failed to make the championship round. In this number was last season’s winner Jerry Belcher, who played with Takapuna club-mate, Jeremy Brosnan. The man he won with in 2023, Tony Grantham of course, was absent, playing with the Black Jacks in the Transtasman tournament at Naenae.
 
Another indication of the competitiveness was that the top qualifiers from Saturday, former Black Jack, Kerry Chapman and his lead, Teo Turua, went out in the round of 16 to the bottom qualifiers, Banks and Hale.