Despite having a bye in the third round on Saturday, the St Clair team is in the box seat with six points and 10.5 games in this year's senior A pennant series.
St Clair leads second-placed North Otago by two points while an ever-improving Chisholm Park sextet lies in third place.
Defending champion Otago A languishes in fourth place after halving with its B team two weeks ago and halving with North Otago on Saturday.
The two draws are worth one point each while a win posts a valuable three points and, with two halves, Otago A could well be out of the running.
Otago A fielded a depleted team, with Duncan Croudis, Cameron Grant, Brandon Hodgson, Kayne Wardell and club champion Jeremy Morgan all missing from the lineup.
The top three came in with wins but the tail trio all lost close matches to their North Otago opponents on the 17th green.
Chisholm Park is the team to be wary of as after many years at the bottom of the table it is now starting to make its mark on the competition.
No 1 Antony McCullough lost on the final green to Daniel Barnett but the next four Park players won in style.
Sean Geary (No 4) and Peter Rae (No 5) both posted 5 and 4 wins. Rae was in particularly good form scoring a par round in winter conditions.
Mark Colli, who has returned to golf after the cricket season, made his mark with a 4 and 3 win over Daniel Elder.
