Connor Mckinney carrying a lot of Australian hopes – file photo USGA
It is the men’s turn at the World Amateur Teams Championship, the highly prized Eisenhower Trophy up for grabs with Perth’s Conner McKinney and Hayden Hopewell, and NSW golfer, Harrison Crowe representing Australia in the event played over 72 holes at Le Golf National (GN), Albatros Course & Golf de Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche (SN), Red Course outside of Paris.
The New Zealand team is made up of Kazuma Kobori, James Hyde, Sam Jones.
72 three man teams take their place with the leading two scores in each of the four rounds counting towards the team total.
Denmark are the defending champions having won the event in Ireland in 2018 with Covid forcing the cancellation of the event in 2020.
The Australians have won the event on four previous occasions, the first in 1958 in its inaugural staging and New Zealand once, the last of those victories coming when the Australian team of Cameron Davis, Curtis Luck and Harrison Endycott took the trophy in Mexico in 2016.
Cameron Davis won the individual title that year.
New Zealand’s only win came in 1992 with Phil Tataurangi, Michael Campbell, Grant Moorhead and Stephen Scahill wining by seven shots over the Americans.
Following an indifferent effort by the Australian and New Zealand women’s teams at the Espirito Santo tournament also in Paris last week, both teams will be looking to better the performance of their female counterparts this week.
Both Hopewell and Crowe have won PGA Tour of Australasia events already in their careers while McKinney is the Australian Amateur Champion.
Kobori has also won an event on the PGA Tour of Australasia, winning the 2019 New Zealand PGA Championship as a 17 year old while his fellow countryman, Hydes, finished runner-up to McKinney at the Australian Amateur Championship earlier this year.
McKinney, Crowe and Hopwell are all inside the top 50 of the current world amateur rankings while Kobori is the best of the New Zealanders in 67th place.
