A combined initiative between Golf Otago and Golf Canterbury has been established to combat declining entries in the provinces’ premier strokeplay tournaments.
With the demise of the SBS Bank Southland invitational tournament, there are no senior teams named early in the year and little incentive for the top players to compete in down time.
The Canterbury strokeplay will be on January 21 and 22 at Templeton, and the Otago event played over four rounds at Balmacewen the following weekend.
The provinces have combined the two in a House of Travel Tour with a total of $2500 in travel vouchers to be won by the best male, best under-19 male and best female over the combined eight rounds.
The best male will receive a voucher valued at $1250 and the best under-19 male gets $500.
The top female will receive $750 for six rounds as the women play 54 holes in each event.
Otago will send six men and two women to the Canterbury stroke event and Canterbury will reciprocate the following weekend.
The provincial bodies will assist these players to compete and they are likely to be chosen on their order-of-merit rankings.
"We want as many players as possible to attend these tournaments and these prizes will give players the opportunity to go to bigger events in the North Island or Australia," Otago Golf Club director Shelley Duncan said.
"I would like to see our top players test themselves on a bigger stage which will help them find out where they rank if they want to go to the next level."
Sponsorship has come from Dunedin’s House of Travel while Canterbury Golf, Golf Otago and the Otago Golf Club have all contributed to the prize pool.
The field for the Otago event received another boost yesterday with the announcement that New Zealand Golf will stage an Open qualifying event on January 30 at Balmacewen.
This is the day after the Otago strokeplay and the top South Island golfers keen to win a place in the field for the New Zealand Open are likely to compete during the weekend.
