Teeing off from Beverly to Augusta

By Gary Larrabee

Gary Larrabee

Hooking and slicing around the vast North Shore Golf region as we jump into our playing prime time - June through October.

The honeymoon should continue for Manny Barros and Jane Ash of Bass River Golf Management, the new team operating Beverly Golf and Tennis Club. They deserve time – at least two years – to genuinely get the McKay Street property anywhere remotely back to its high standard of appearance, efficiency and service from the Friel Golf Management days. As long as Mayor Bill Scanlon and the Beverly Golf and Tennis Commission keep their commitments to Barros in regards to the restoration of the clubhouse, upgrading of the golf course and the installation of four hard surface tennis courts, the municipal facility will indeed return to its glory days of the 1980s and 1990s.

The place never looked better as a member-public entity than when Al Auger, and later David Friel, held the reins. A final word on Doug Johnson of Johnson Golf Management, who ran the place for the last six years, often while at loggerheads with Scanlon. He was far from Mr. Personality. He was hardly a people person. He certainly had his differences with the staff and the city. He could have been far more congenial to the golfers and tennis players, particularly the members. As a “business first, buddies second” manager, he is as relieved to be rid of the Beverly contract as the club regulars are to be rid of him. So let the new era begin.

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Finishing second at the Masters couldn’t have happened to a better person than Tiger Woods. The moment he declared on Tuesday of Masters Week that he wasn’t playing in the next day’s tradition-rich Par-3 Tournament with all of his top challengers, as well as icons Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, he lost me indefinitely as a supporter. To have participated, he said, would have thrown off his preparation for the main event starting on Thursday. Who was he kidding? He knows the Masters layout like the back of his hand. He could probably shoot 70 with his eyes closed. I’ll give him just an inch of slack in that he did have minor knee surgery a few days after the Masters, but he still was apparently well enough to walk four rounds during the event. His declining to take a couple lousy hours from his Wednesday routine to play in front of patrons who for the most part were not going to be on the hallowed grounds the succeeding four days was an absurd breach of protocol and an insult to Masters officials.

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It’s great news that Myopia Hunt Club in South Hamilton will serve as host site for the 102nd Massachusetts Amateur Championship in 2010. Myopia is unquestionably one of the state’s finest match-play venues and would be an ideal site for a future Walker Cup Match some time after the 2010 Curtis Cup Match is contested at sister club Essex County in Manchester. If invited, the United States Golf Association would say yes in a second. This will be Myopia’s fifth Mass Am. It hosted the first in 1903, won by Arthur Lockwood, and later crowned as champions Ed Connell (1955), Steve Taco (1985) and current PGA Tour player James Driscoll (1996).

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Hard to believe, but it’s been 45 years since Danvers’ Bill Flynn made all kinds of Massachusetts Golf Association history while winning the Massachusetts Open at Kenwood CC in Salem. To this day it ranks as one of the greatest final-round performances in Mass. Open annals. At the time, 1963, Flynn had just left his long-time assistant’s post at Salem to become the pro at the newly organized Thomson Club in North Reading. Flynn was one busy man that season, but he found time to play at Kenwood and become the first – and only – lefthanded winner in history. Equally remarkable is how he did it at the age of 26. Flynn fired a four-under 66 in the closing round (they played 36 holes the second day), playing the last six holes in five-under par with two eagles, including a holed out six-iron second shot on the 425-yard uphill 16th. He trailed by three shots with six holes to play. “It was my time,” Flynn recalled while visiting his company’s Lakeview GC in Wenham. The company also includes Far Corner GC and Windham CC.

“You never expect to shoot 66, but when you have so many good things happen to you the last few holes, that’s when it happens. I smile every time I think about that day. It was special.”

Gary Larrabee, the author of The Green and Gold Coast: The History of Golf on Boston's North Shore, 1893-2001, has been covering the North Shore/Greater Boston golf scene for 35 years. He has written centennial histories for Salem, Winchester and Wenham Country Clubs. His latest book project, the 100-year history of St. John's Prep, was published last summer.