This was a repeat of the first round score it achieved in Queenstown in November and it was always comfortable, especially on the women’s side, with Otago missing its three top players from the first round.
Lakes was able to field the Davis Cup captain Alastair Hunt and he showed he had lost little of the power that took him to a high world ranking when he dismissed Otago No1 Mitchell Sizemore 6-3, 6-1.
Paddy Ou got one back against former touring pro Perry Crockett when he won the third set 6-1 but Thomas Hartono and Lan Bale beat Ryan Eggers and Carlos Reid in straight sets.
With two New Zealand junior internationals at the top of the women’s order in Emilia Price and Valentina Ivanov, backed up by the very experienced Li Ying Moroney and Suma Ito, Lakes dropped only 11 games in the four singles, although Jessie Stevenson provided some resistance when taking five games off Price.
Once the heat went out of the contest, Lakes was able to play its roster in the dead rubbers and Otago picked up two of the four doubles. Sizemore and Ou pushed Hunt and Hartono to a third set match tiebreak.
Southland held on to beat North Otago 7-5 in a contest which was always in the balance and was decided on the final doubles.
On Saturday, Lakes had beaten both Southland and North Otago 11-1. Josh Cochrane took the only rubber for Southland when he beat reserve Bjorn Pollock 6-4 in the third and Mackenzie Phillips won 6-2, 6-1 to claim North Otago’s only success.
Otago beat both teams 9-3 and again Otago conceded rubbers on the women’s side. Stevenson, Rileigh Fields and Zoe Berryman went down against North Otago and Fields, Ilana Goossens and the top double losing in the Southland tie.
In a dramatic finish to Division 2, where a three-way tie was likely until late in the day, a very young Otago B team caused a series of upsets to take down a heavily favoured and very experienced Southern Lakes B 8-4, sealing it without getting out the calculators.
On Saturday, Northern Southland beat Otago B on a countback after Otago had held match and tie point in a double which went late into the night, but Otago was happy to see South Canterbury beat Northern Southland, also on countback, to remove it from the equation, as this was its second loss for the season.
Otago needed to beat Lakes B to claim the title, which would put both teams on one loss and Otago then needed to win by 7-5 or more. The seventh win came in the men’s doubles and an eighth was added in the last women’s double.
