It’s back-to-back pennant wins for Korumburra

AFTER not being able to win the Division One South Gippsland District Golf Association pennant for more than 50 years, the Korumburra Golf Club has gone back-to-back in dramatic circumstances at Mirboo North on Sunday.

And it was Korumburra’s Matt Wrigley, playing the deciding match against Lang Lang’s Levi Maxwell, who produced the shot of the day on the 18th to lead the team to victory.

Holding on to a one stroke lead after wins either way on the 15th and 16th, and then a halved hole on the 17th, Matt was first off on the 18th tee, 328 metres back up the hill to the clubhouse.

His drive was long enough but away to the right and he faced a shot between two big trees, from the ninth fairway, to the green. It wasn’t ideal.

Levi was straight up the guts, “in the mayor’s office”, as they say, and looking pretty to square the contest up and take it to the 19th in the decider.

The rain had arrived and Matt addressed the ball on a slightly uphill lie. He got it up into the air quickly, cleared the trees and landed the ball with a plop and a small jump on the green a full 140 metres away.

From his perfect position, Levi wasn’t quite so fortunate, hitting the bank on the right side of the 18th green and rolling away down the slope. Advantage Wrigley.

From 20 feet away, Wrigley was potentially two putts from protecting his one-shot lead, thereby securing a 4-3 win for the team but Levi Maxwell very nearly holed a difficult chip shot, only to see slide several feet away.

Wrigley’s putt came up within a foot of the hole, a “gimmie” in match play, and he pumped the air after Levi gave him the putt and it was game over; a second Division One pennant for the “red shirts” in two years.

As cool as Wrigley looked over the closing holes, he admitted to a bout of nerves on the final hole.

“Yeah, I’m still shaking, mate,” he said as he piloted his golf cart away from the scene of jubilation around a wet 18th green with his Korumburra teammates, including his two sons Billie Wrigley and Jake Wrigley, who’d both played their part in the title defence.

Young Billie Wrigley had held off a fast-finishing Bart McDonald to win two up with one to play, while Jake had drawn the short straw, playing against Lang Lang’s best player, Jye Kruyer, playing of +3.5, against Jake’s handicap of 8. He did well to hold off Kruyer until the 13th.

The other Korumburra winners on the day were Steve Bromby 4/3 over John Mills and Ben Fitzpatrick 6/5 over Richard Briggs.

Shane Harland went down 2&1 to Aaron Morris after a great contest when Morris chipped in for eagle on the 452-metre par 5 17th. Lang Lang’s Gary Sosenko, who played for Korumburra last year, had a convincing 6/5 win over Wayne Kennedy.

It was a remarkable pennant defence for Korumburra, especially after they’d lost 5-2 to Lang Lang away only a week earlier. That was Korumburra’s only loss for the season going into the grand final, but lang lang hadn’t lost one.. until Sunday’s finale.

Incidentally, Matt Wrigley did not lose a pennant match in the 2026 season.

The two other pennant grand finals, in Division Two and Division Three were won by Meeniyan 4-3 against Leongatha (Div 2), again in dramatic fashion, and Welshpool 4½ - 2½ against Woorayl (Div 3).

While Welshpool were relatively untroubled on the day with Joe Platt 4/3, Graeme Brennan 5/4, Ricky Platt 3/2 and Lochie Duncan 2up winning their matches and Nino Ditta squaring it with Craig Gourlay, Meeniyan’s Div 2 had a battle royale against Leongatha.

Rob Eddy 1up, Jeff Buckland 1up and Scott Brown 8/6 all won their matches in regular time, despite a late charge by Leongatha’s Peter Ali against Eddy who nonetheless produced a clutch chip on the last to protect his lead. Meeniyan were in front 3 matches to two and hoping for either Ash Zuidema or Jacob Byrnes to bring home the bacon.

Jacob Byrnes looked best placed, one up with one to play against Paul Kennedy until the latter ‘knifed’ a chip shot which came up two feet from the cup. The match was forced on to a 19th, 20th and ultimately 21st hole before Kennedy prevailed.

It was three matches all as Peter Rayson (leongatha) and Ash Zuidema (Meeniyan) also duked it out to the 21st hole where Zuidema played a superb second shot to the green to secure victory for his team.

That contest didn’t finish until well after 3pm, followed by the presentations.

It was the first time in many years, if ever, that Mirboo North has hosted a pennant grand final day, made possible by their return to the South Gippsland association from West Gippsland.

All speakers praised the condition of the course for the final and acknowledged the tremendous work that has been done there since hundreds of trees were torn down in the hurricane of February 2024.