Sand Shots

By Gary Larrabee

Hitting a few hooks and slices your way while marveling at the wonderful world of North Shore Golf:

• Here’s hoping one of our several fine-playing area pros (like Frank Dully of Kernwood Country Club) can follow the footsteps of Newburyport native Charley Volpone (1972) and Manchester’s Pat Bates (1993) and become the third North Shore standout to win the Massachusetts Open at Tedesco (June 16-18).

• And that maybe someone like Tedesco’s Cy Kilgore can break through and capture the Massachusetts Mid-Amateur at Myopia Hunt Club Sept. 29-Oct. 1.

• Hopefully you have already acquired your tickets for the “Tiger Woods Show” at TPC Boston in Norton over Labor Day weekend, also known as the Deutsche Bank U.S. Championship. Next order of business, pencil in the second full week in June, 2013, for the U.S. Open at The Country Club, in Brookline, marking the 100th anniversary of Francis Ouimet’s historic Open victory over British stars Harry Vardon and Ted Ray. Which reminds me: when will Salem Country Club be hosting another USGA event?

• I cannot wait for the official openings of Turner Hill in Ipswich this September and The Renaissance Club in Haverhill next summer. I guarantee they will become ?Top 10? courses in Massachusetts within three years.

• You can read all about it on page 16, but this year marks the 40th anniversary of one of the great charges in Mass Open history, when Danvers’ Bill Flynn played the last six holes in 5-under-par, buoyed by two eagles, and won the 1963 edition at Kernwood.

• What community on the North Shore and in the Merrimack Valley boasts the most golf courses? Haverhill, with five, and Renaissance will make six. Yes, Haverhill is the Mecca of golf hereabouts.

• You had to love what transpired at The Masters this year. A Canadian left-hander won the green jacket. Tiger reminded us he is very much human. Phil Mickelson continues as the people’s choice, even though he failed once again to win his first major. And Ricky Barnes made amateurs everywhere proud. But Len Mattiace’s tear-jerking interview after losing the playoff? Please! This is golf, not mortal combat.

• So now it’s on to Chicago and the U.S. Open at Olympia Fields on June 12-15. Here are your humble servant’s choices, to borrow a phrase from the late, great Will McDonough:

1. Phil Mickelson — He is too fine a talent and too much a fan favorite not to break through this year.

2. Tiger Woods — Only second, you say? Maybe he’s spending too much time with Elin Nordegren.

3. Mike Weir — His star has emerged.

• By the time you read this, Annika Sorenstam will have made the cut at Colonial. But that chap trying to gain access to an LPGA Tour event? Send him to Serbia with a one-way ticket.

• Call me provincial and biased, which I am, but from my view, Salem CC is an absolute masterpiece – the best pure 18 in the state. There’s no way it should have slipped from 65th to 69th in Golf Digest’s ?America’s 100 Greatest Courses? for 2003-2004.

• Myopia Country Club, host to four of the earliest U.S. Opens, but no USGA championship in 95 years, would be a wonderful venue for a U.S. Senior Amateur. The USGA wants to stage a national event in South Hamilton, but not a Senior Open, as is desired by the Myopia leadership.

• A final word on Tiger Woods. Bobby Jones was the greatest short-term golfer until Tiger came along. Tiger clearly assumes that identity these days, influenced in no small part by his record-breaking margins of victory at the U.S. Open, Masters and British Open. But Eldrick still has a long road to travel to dethrone Jack Nicklaus as the greatest long-term golfer the world has ever seen.