However, the team gained some satisfaction on finals day by beating the 2014 and 2015 winner Waikato in the morning semifinal.
Wellington beat North Harbour in style in the other semifinal to set up what looked to be an epic final.
But Wellington proved to be too strong and the Otago players appeared flat after the morning semifinal in which they claimed a 3-1 win with no lost matches. Three games went the full distance.
In the morning, Otago No1 Fraser MacLachlan had a rematch of his quarterfinal in the New Zealand championships against Waikato’s Luke Toomey but this time he gave as good as he got.
MacLachlan led by one after eight holes but Toomey did not let go and the match was hard fought before they finished tied on the final green.
No2 Brandon Hodgson went into finals day with a good record and won the 11th and 12th holes to take a two-shot lead over Nick Coxon.
Coxon birdied 14 and 15 to square the match and the pair halved the last three holes to give Otago its second half.
No3 Inia Logan turned 2-down against Matt Morris. The match oscillated between 1 and 2-down until Logan won the 15th and 17th holes to get back to square.
The pair halved the final hole for Otago’s third half which clinched the win as the Otago tail had posted two wins by that stage.
No4 Michael Smith was never down in his match against Charlie Smail but turned level despite an eagle- on the par-5 seventh.
The pair were square at the turn but Smith won the first two holes on the homeward run to take control before losing 13 and 15 to return to square.
Smith’s tenacity came to the fore and he won the 17th with a birdie-3 to set up his win.
Otago No5 Chris Snow birdied the first two holes to take an early lead over Chris Charlton in a rematch of last year’s final in Invercargill.
This year Snow reversed the result, taking the honours on the penultimate green.
In the afternoon, Otago was competitive on the front nine with MacLachlan square after eight holes while Logan, Smith and Snow trailed by one at the same stage, but Hodgson was struggling against Jonathan Cane.
On the back nine, however, Otago ran out of gas and it was all one-way traffic. Snow lost 3 and 2 while Smith went one hole more.
A barrage of birdies by Elton Nicholson cost Logan on the first four holes of the back nine while Hodgson also went down by a convincing margin.
This gave Wellington four wins and the team conceded the match between No1 Maclachlan and Daniel Hillier with three holes to play.
Hillier, who emerged with the best record of the 75 golfers during the week, was named player of the tournament.
