SOME GOLFING ROUGHRIDERS got together as part of their 50th high school reunion this past weekend
Murray Gwynn, Danny Fey and Ed Hooper, seniors on the 1962 Port Angeles Golf team that finished second in state, gathered with classmates to sit and bull over past shenanigans.
But first they connected over some golf.
The trio, along with classmate Jeff Button who passed away in the intervening years and junior Jeff Dunlap, were quite the team at the time, with every player able to shoot consistently in the low 70s and on occasion mosey into the 60s.
“Our coach at that time was Marv Cross and he set up matches all over the state and if I recall we had 17 and never lost a match,” Gwynn said.
The Port Angeles team was able to take advantage of some easier travel for the first time that season: the opening of the Hood Canal Bridge the previous August helped shave some time off of trips.
Gwynn recalled taking on Everett in their first match of the season.
“Everett hadn’t lost a match in seven years and we beat them to get the season off successfully,” Gwynn said.
They faced other teams from Olympia, Bremerton, Shelton and of course Port Townsend, even though Gwynn said they didn’t take the Redskins seriously.
“We were so cocky, we had a second team to play against some teams like Port Townsend,” he joked.
The team qualified for the state tournament, which at the time was a one-day 18-hole collective score team event.
Washington high school athletics didn’t classify schools by size back then so all teams regardless of student size competed for each title, similar to Hickory High in the movie “Hoosiers.”
Port Angeles had the lead late but ended up losing out on the state championship trophy.
“Wilson [High School] of Tacoma beat us for the title, you don’t forget those things,” Gwynn said.
Gwynn, who summers on the Olympic Peninsula, and Fey, who spends the warm months in Cathlamet, both snowbird down in Arizona.
Calling the Grand Canyon-state “golf paradise,” Gwynn mentioned both the quality of the nearby courses and the level of ability of many of the players, citing one course which nearly 15 professional players list as their home course.
Hooper, who resides in Georgia, lost contact with his buddies but reconnected with Gwynn about 8 years ago.
“He found me somehow and I’m excited to see him after 50 years,” Gwynn said before the reunion.
The trio planned to play Peninsula Golf Course in Port Angeles last Friday before reunion events started.
“He and I have been swapping old stories about the golf team via email and I’m sure we will have a lot more [in person],” Gwynn said.
Three events in PT
Three September events have been planned for Port Townsend Golf Course.
The 16th annual Port Townsend Elks Scholarship Golf Tournament will be held on Saturday, Sept. 8.
I compile the annual graduation scholarship tab for the paper and I know the Elks do a tremendous amount for local high school graduates (and others in the community) and this tourney will support a number of positive outcomes.
A 10 a.m. shotgun start will kickoff the two-person best ball event.
There will be gross and net prizes and individual champions for Elks and non-members.
Green fees are $40 per player plus $5 green fees for non-members.
Port Townsend will also host a Team Port Townsend Golf Tournament on Saturday, Sept. 22.
This tourney will raise money to support Blue Heron Middle School sports.
Sports are back this year at Blue Heron after community fundraising rallied to plug a budget gap.
Finally, Port Townsend Sunrise Rotary’s annual Night Time Glow Ball Golf Tournament will be held on Saturday, Sept. 29.
For details on all these events, phone the course at 360-385-4547.
Humane Society event
The Olympic Peninsula Humane Society will hold its annual Claws and Paws Golf Tournament at Cedars at Dungeness Golf Course in Sequim on Friday, Sept. 21.
Proceeds from the tournament go toward the nearly 2,000 animals that come to the shelter each year.
Registration for the two-person scramble tournament starts at 7 a.m. with an 8 a.m. shotgun start.
Cost is $100 per player which includes golf, cart, range balls, tee prizes, long drive, KP’s, raffle tickets and a lunch ticket.
Guest tickets for luncheon by itself are also available.
Mulligans will be available for purchase at time of registration.
For more information call: Bill Dole, tournament chair at 360-452-5983 or 360-912-1824, Garrett Smithson of Cedars at 360-477-2718 or Donna Halsaver at 360-683-3994 or 505-299-1777.
Hole-in-one warning
Tournament organizers looking for hole-in-one insurance should be leery of associating with Kevin Kolenda of Hole-in-Won.com Worldwide.
Kolenda specializes in insurance for golf tournament hole-in-one prizes but the problem, according to the state of Washington, is his failure to pony up when players hit paydirt.
Kolenda was charged last week in King County Superior Court with five counts of transacting insurance without a license, a class B felony.
Kolenda, 54, ignored a previous cease-and-desist order and a $125,000 fine from state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler.
“He has a long history of selling illegal insurance, refusing to pay prize winners, and thumbing his nose at regulators,” said Kreidler.
In some cases, charities have had to come up with the prize money. In others, the prize winners agreed to forego a prize.
Weak sauce.
In Washington Kolenda is accused of illegally selling insurance and not paying up on a $10,000 prize for a 2003 Bremerton tournament; a $50,000 prize for a 2004 Vancouver event.
After a hearing at which Kolenda failed to appear, he was ordered in 2008 to pay a $125,000 fine. He never did, according to the state.
And he still hasn’t put up $25,000 for a 2010 tourney in Snohomish.
Hole-in-one hoax
It was the stuff of legends: four players walked away with aces in a recent 64-person tournament at McCormick Woods Golf Course in Port Orchard.
The story was big enough to get picked up as a first-page sports story by Jeff Graham of the Kitsap Sun.
Graham wrote: “It wasn’t a question of who’d shoot a hole-in-one Thursday during the Great Googly-Ball tournament at McCormick Woods Golf Club in Port Orchard.
“It was a question of when the run of aces would come to an end.”
John Armstrong of Illahee, Shawn Cucciardi of Port Orchard, Mike Hancock of Seabeck and Cris Larsen of Manette all recorded holes-in-one during the foursome, best-ball event.
“We were throwing darts with the gods today,” said Larsen, the tournament’s director. “Everybody was just going nuts.”
Graham called Larsen multiple times as well as Cucciardi, who co-owns McCormick Woods and ran for a Bremerton Port Commissioner position in 2011, to verify details for the story.
It ran in the paper and all was well until Kitsap Sun editor David Nelson attended his Wednesday morning Rotary Club meeting.
Larsen was there, laughing about making the entire thing up.
Nelson quickly contacted Graham who penned an article exposing the scam and how they were taken.
Graham, a colleague of ours who has helped share prep scores in the past with the Peninsula Daily News, was steamed. And rightfully so.
Turns out, Larsen is a bit of a joker, and told Rotary members the “holes-in-one” were actually instances where golfers hit their tee shots with golf clubs, then rolled balls in the hole using their hands.”
But he didn’t say that to Graham, didn’t let on that the “tournament” was actually a group of four friends getting together to have fun.
When Graham pressed him on these issues after the truth came out, Larsen feigned innocence saying, “I wasn’t trying to make up anything.”
That’s absolutely bogus, Mr. Larsen. And you should be ashamed of yourself and your prank.
The first story is at tinyurl.com/4HolesinOne and Graham’s follow-up is at tinyurl.com/NotLaughingNow.
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Golf columnist Michael Carman can be reached at 360-417-3527 or pdngolf@gmail.com.