With a 4.5-1.5 win over St Clair Gold at St Clair on Saturday, Otago Blue has amassed 16 points and 26 games to take a convincing lead in this year's metropolitan senior A pennant series.
Although Island Park lost to St Clair Blue on Saturday, the Waldronville team remains in second place with 12 points and 17.5 games.
The Chisholm Links team is hard on Island Park's heels and much interest will be centred on the seventh round next Saturday when the two teams meet. The Links sextet has home advantage.
After a woeful start, St Clair Blue was back to its best, winning five of the six games at Island Park to improve to fourth place, just one place shy of making the playoffs.
For St Clair, Ryan Bellamy won the battle of the No1s while No2 Stephen Hitchcox and No6 Greg Johnson also posted impressive winning margins.
But player of the day was No3, Michael Ormandy, who made seven birdies in the 13 holes he required to beat Jarden Hammond.
Ormandy put Hammond on the back foot from the outset by making four birdies in the first seven holes.
Connor Ross beat Monty Wong on the final green while Park captain Michael Minty birdied the penultimate hole to head Chris Snow 1-up.
Otago Blue fielded a strong line-up, with the tail trio all posting big wins while No2 Tyrone Ratahi beat Cameron Botting on the final green to give Otago its fourth game.
Otago captain Brandon Hodgson continued to lead by example, eagling the par-5 14th to beat Conor Jamison 6 and 4.
Hodgson, who played at No2 for Otago in last year's national tournament, has won all of his five pennant matches this year.
One can only feel for St Clair's Ross Colquhoun, who is winless to date but is unbeaten, posting his fourth half of the season. On Saturday, he had a tough struggle with national left-handed champion Ben Patston.
Yesterday, Chisholm Links put the second Balmacewen team to the sword, winning four of the six games played.
Links No1 Brent Butler is thriving this year and is unbeaten with three wins and two halves from five starts.
Yesterday he required 15 just holes to beat Cameron Ryder while Mark Collie, Matthew Heaton and Jason Pegler also won to give the Links team four wins.
Heaton made a birdie three at the last to beat John McIntee while for Otago Gold, Paul Hubbard and Ben Turner won.
