RISING golf star Stephanie Baker has added another trophy to an expanding collection after a play-off hole victory at the Victorian Junior Country Championship.
The Robinvale teenager earned the top individual girls honour as co-captain of the Murray Darling Golf Association team at the prestigious teams-based Victorian Junior Country Regions event at Heathcote, the first time in over a decade MDGA have fielded a full team of 11.
After two rounds at Heathcote Golf Course, Baker was all tied up with Olive Spitty of Commonwealth Golf Golf Club with identical rounds of 78 and 80, finishing three strokes ahead of Commonwealth’s Casey Chandler.
It took just one play-off hole to decide the winner, however, as Baker recovered from a bunker shot to earn the victory.
Riverside’s Cooper Mitchell also had an outstanding performance to come runner-up in the boys’ 36-hole net event, finishing at -1 after handicap however Bendigo’s Mitchell Cakebread took overall honours after a countback.
In previous years MDGA co-captains Baker and Cameron Smith had to play as part of combined ‘super regions’ however this year there were more than enough numbers for Murray Darling to enter a full team.
Alongside the more experienced duo, Mitchell, Joel Doherty, James Clay, Max Marks, Oliver Zambelli, Shaun Hollingworth, Lachlan Smith, Isaiah Faulkhead and Harvey Spratt all competed in the event for the first time.
Top six individual scores each day are counted towards the overall team total.
Team manager Garth Doherty said it was a huge result.
“It’s a great learning curve for everyone,” he said.
“It’s the first time in many years we have been able to send a full team of 11.
“We only had about 48 hours to get a team together, but the great things was even though we had a list of 11 players to offer the chance to first, I still had another 11 to 15 players that could have easily made the team otherwise, so it certainly wasn’t a walk-up start for anyone.
“Junior golf has really been growing in the region.”
Doherty said Riverside’s Baker put in a strong performance to hold her nerve in front of a big crowd.
“It was a fantastic performance from her, there was about 150 there watching the play-off so to hold her nerve and finish the way she did was brilliant.
In a stacked boys class there were plenty of impressive performances from Sunraysia golfers, with Clay (170), Mitchell (173), Smith (174) and Doherty (175) all finishing in the top half of the scratch leader board.
Geelong’s Chris Filipowicz was the winner with 143.
