Milford 5000 – report by Lindsay Knight

Birkenhead’s talented siblings, Millie and Chad Nathan, furthered their fine record at the Milford 5000 with an impressive win in the prestigious one-to-eight tournament at the weekend.

With Will Tonga at lead, the Nathan triple was the only combination to be unbeaten in what was a cut-throat championship post-section.
This was the third time the Nathan’s combo has won the Milford 5000 title.

The clean sweep of all four of Sunday’s game gave them the first prize money of $1500 and the Dorreen-Preston Cup, the trophy presented by former club members, Graham and Tim, who started this ambitious tournament in 2009 and which has gone from strength to strength ever since.

A full field of 32 teams from clubs in North Harbour, Auckland, Northland and Bay of Plenty entered, with teams being split into championship and plate sections after Saturday’s qualifying rounds.  Included among the teams were many promising junior and intermediate players with a stipulation that each line-up had to have at least one player in the one-to-five category. Some of the players have already been achievers in open championships at centre and even national levels.

Millie Nathan has been one of those, as have several Manly players like Shaun Goldsbury, Skye Renes, Matt Higginson and Andy Dorrance, Mairangi Bay’s Gaye Horne and Alan Langley, Orewa’s Paul Daniels and Browns Bay’s Craig Lane and the remarkable Lloyd Sinton.

In second place and winning $900 was a Papatoetoe Hunters Corner team of Peni Panapa, Pale Luka and Prak Ranchodd.
Third place was filled by a spectacular Te Atatu Peninsula team of big-driving Adam Blucher, Jean-Claude Fuller, who last season had a brief spell at Takapuna, and Scott McCamish.

Over the final two round some of the leading teams cancelled each other out for the top prize. So having to settle for fourth and fifth places respectively were the strong Manly teams of Goldsbury, Renes and first year player Doug Hiku and of Dorrance, Higginson and Chris Searle. In sixth place was Orewa’s Wayne Harris, Allan McQuoid and Kerry Greenhalgh. 

Hobsonville’s David den Hertog, John Roberts and Nigel Rattray won the plate section from Point Chevalier’s Aaron White, Stephen Campbell and Hitesh Ranchhod and in third place Te Atatu’s Garry Howard, Paul Ghezzi and Joshua Tipene.  In this section was a Riverhead team in which Bowls New Zealand chief executive Mark Cameron was a member.

 
It was another outstanding effort by the Milford club and its vast number of volunteers headed by Charlie McDonald, Bik Cheung and Jan Hutton to again successfully stage this event. It was also a credible feat by greenkeeper Hamish Russell to have both the club’s greens ready, especially with the challenges involved in preparing one which has recently been converted to Maniototo.

Even the weather was kind, with Sunday’s heavy showers not reaching the North Shore until late afternoon. After last year’s disastrous floods ruined the tournament this was something that was well deserved.