A win or a half against Tasman would place Tairāwhiti at least 13th.
Team No 2 Anaru Reedy this morning told the Gisborne Herald “a win today would be lovely”.
Reedy, who has played at every Freyberg Masters bar 2018 since making his debut in 2015, said they were “pretty shattered”. Eight rounds in five days at this level was “a lot of golf”, but they were determined to lift one more time.
Tairāwhiti suffered their heaviest defeat of the week in round 7 on Thursday – a 5-0 whitewash by North Harbour.
No 1 Jace Brown lost 6 and 4; Reedy, who had won five matches up to then, fell 3 and 1 to Cameron Emett; No 3 David Solomann lost 2 and 1 to Ben Jujnovich – a regular at the Poverty Bay Open; No 4 Richard Apanui lost 1 down to Stephen O’Reilly; and Matt Henwood, in his first Freyberg Masters match, was beaten 3 and 2 by James Colligan.
Henwood replaced Waka Donnelly, who had family commitments.
Tairāwhiti have been competitive throughout the week, despite losing the next five rounds after Monday’s dream start.
“There’s been just a couple of key times when we did not quite fire,” Reedy said.
Reedy and Donnelly sang the praises of the Omaha Beach course.
“It’s an awesome track,” Donnelly said. “It ticks every box.”
“It’s a great course,” Reedy said. “It’s tricky … and when the wind gets up, it gets real tough.”
Donnelly also praised the performance of Reedy, who was on track to emulate last year’s six victories.
“Ru’s playing awesome. This is his tournament.”
Heading into this morning, reigning champions Auckland were top of the table on a perfect six points, 1.5 ahead of Wellington, Bay of Plenty and Canterbury.