Wellington's Matthew Lane strode around Formosa in a scintillating 64 shots to break the course record and collect the NZ Open trophy for his first tournament victory since turning professional five years ago.

An emotional Lane collected a cool $94,000 for his victory, which supplements the meager $US 15,000 he had collected this year competing on the US Nike Tour.

Lane's win was made sweeter when he later learnt that his wife and two kids in the US had watched it live on the Golf Channel back in Los Angeles.

Round Four Completed Scores

Matthew Lane Rod Pampling Phil Tataurangi Grant Moorhead Lucas Parsons Peter Lonard Elliot Boult Peter O'Malley Nick O'Hern Chi-Huang Tsai Michael Campbell

(NZ) (QLD) (NZL) (NZ) (NSW) (NSW) (NZ) (NSW) (WA) (TAI) (NZL)

72 69 74 64 - 279 69 71 73 69 - 282 68 74 75 66 - 283 76 74 65 68 - 283 72 75 69 68 - 284 74 73 68 69 - 284 73 70 69 72 - 284 76 71 70 68 - 285 73 68 72 72 - 285 75 69 73 69 - 286 70 72 73 71 - 286

Win opens doors

After missing out on pre-qualifying in the US earlier this year Lane was without a Tour to play on, his win in the NZ Open means he is now exempt on the Australian Tour for the next two years. This means Monday qualifying is a thing of the past and he now gets an automatic entry into the main draw of each tournament.

The win also includes an invite to the prestigious World Sarazen Open next year with the winners of all the other Opens around the world. The tournament is worth $US 3Million and will be a major boost to the bank balance as there is a minimum cheque just for finishing.

Leading Amateur

Carterton's Reon Sayer carded a final round 75 to win the Bledisloe Cup for the lowest amateur score at the NZ Open. He held off a strong challenge from Canterbury's Carl Brooking to win by one shot.

"My form was pretty disappointing, especially with the putter, I lost three shots a round because of three putting and it would have been nicer to finish up higher".

Reon now has a break for Christmas before getting back into golf with the Under 23's in Hastings later in January.

Both amateurs received Philips TV's for their efforts.

1998 Bledisloe Cup Results

1 Reon Sayer (NZ) 77 73 75 75 - 300
2 Carl Brooking (NZ) 78 73 77 73 - 301

Fix up the Trophy

Two years ago at Paraparaumu Michael Long held up the NZ Open trophy only to see it collaspe into 3 bits, two years on and the trophy still hasn't been put together, come on NZGA, get the thing fixed!

[TOP]