St Clair holds a handy lead in the men's Otago Coastal Senior A pennant series with two rounds to play.
It won its eighth-round match against South Otago 5.5-2.5 on Saturday, and beat North Otago 7-1 in a catch-up game yesterday, St Clair has 17 points and 44.5 games and leads second-placed Otago (15 points and 41 games), while Taieri, Chisholm Park and North Otago are all out of contention with six points each.
The defending St Clair team has two tough games - Taieri at Taieri and Otago at home - to finish.
It is not likely to lose to Taieri, which is a shadow of the team that dominated the series in recent years, but if it goes down to Otago, the latter will take the series.
Bottom-placed South Otago put up a good struggle against St Clair on Saturday, taking two games and halving another.
Travis Applegarth beat Chris Idour on the final green and Rin Niovara-Dave beat Chris Snow, also on the last hole.
Jonathan Linklater had an impressive half with Stephen Hitchcox, who has one of the best matchplay records in the series.
North Otago took three games off Otago at Balmacewen, with schoolboys Andrew Caldwell and Ben Cant posting good wins.
The battle at the top was tight with North Otago's Michael Minty and Gary Creedy holding Cameron Beel and Murray Edgar to a half.
Chisholm Park beat Taieri 4.5-3.5 despite the top two Taieri golfers winning in style.
Russell Newman and Ben Clutterbuck both won on the final hole. Chisholm Park already had four wins in the bag with Mike Dobson securing the valuable half that made the difference.
Yesterday's catch-up matches were one-sided affairs, with St Clair downing North Otago 7-1 and Otago beating South Otago 6.5-1.5.
Creedy was the only North Otago winner, beating Snow by 4 and 2, while for South Otago, Jeff Bisset beat Hamish Ireland on the final green.
The form at Balmacewen was good, with Otago No 1 Beel under par to beat Applegarth in 17 holes.
