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"IF YOU LIKE GOLF"
online golf column
by
Chris Dortch
April 18, 2008
Another golf season
is upon us, which means we’ll be filling this space every couple
of weeks until October. As always, we’ll also cover several of the
Chattanooga area’s top amateur events.
Speaking of that, the entry deadline for the
Brainerd Invitational is April 29. The tournament will be played
at the venerable Donald Ross course May 3-4. It’s easier than ever
to enter, now that we’ve put the forms on this website (click
here to enter).
I was just looking at the list of past
champions in the Brainerd—the first tournament was played in
1945—and the list is impressive. Some of the best amateurs in the
city’s history have won there: Ira Templeton, Ed Brantly, Larry
White, Mickey Mabry, Hunt Gilliland, Mike Nelms, Kep Henley, Gibby
Gilbert III, Richard Keene, Michael Morrison, Andrew Black, etc.
etc.
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It was an unusually busy off-season for
movement among area golf professionals. Usually, one or two will
change jobs, but this year, there were a lot more than that,
definitely worthy of mentioning here.
The Honors Course replaced long-time head
professional Todd Killian with Henrik Simonsen, who comes from
Spanish Oaks Golf Club in Austin, Texas. Simonsen inherits a busy
schedule, tournament wise, for the next three years, as The Honors
will play host to the Tennessee Women’s Amateur in June, the
Tennessee Men’s Amateur in 2009 and the NCAA Championships in
2010. Most local golfers recall that the 1996 NCAAs were played at
The Honors in what turned out to be Tiger Woods’ last collegiate
tournament. He won despite a final-round 80.
Several other area golf pros are now working
out of new courses:
• Jay Underwood, former assistant at The
Honors, has taken over as head professional at Signal Mountain.
His new assistant is Mike Miller, formerly the head pro at Eagle
Bluff. That duo will be well liked by the members, trust me on
that.
• Scott Hare, formerly the head pro at
Signal, moves over to Chattanooga Golf Center, where he’ll work as
an instructor under Colt Helton, who took over managing the
facility after former manager Corey McKay returned to his native
Canada.
• At Lookout Mountain, former Chattanooga
Golf and Country Club head professional Billy Buchanan has taken
over as club manager. Tad Holley is still the head professional.
• WindStone made a great hire when it chose
Jeff Craig as its new head professional. Craig had formerly worked
as the golf professional at The Farm in Dalton, Ga. and before
that, as an assistant at Signal Mountain.
Craig has done a tremendous job running the
city’s junior golf program for the last several years, even doing
so after he left the area for The Farm.
“He called me after he left for The Farm,”
said Chattanooga District Golf Association past president Mike
Jenkins, “and said ‘Is there any chance you would let me continue
to run the junior golf program?’ I said, ‘Let you run it? Are you
kidding me? It’s yours.’ ”
Keeping track of the junior circuit is a big,
often thankless job. Craig’s organizational skills, work ethic and
good relationships with players and parents have been a huge plus
for the program.
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NOTEBOOK: In addition to the ZCup Points
Standings, Chattanooga Golf Center will now sponsor the Z Golf
Scoreboard, which can be found on this website. … The point
standings have been tweaked to allow players who record top-20
finishes in regular-season tournaments to still have a chance to
play in the season-ending Chattanooga TPC. In the past, when a
star system was used, players could earn one star for a top-20
finish. Three top-20s were generally enough to earn a spot in the
TPC. When the tournament switched to a points system last year,
that would have left some players out of the tournament, unless
Jenkins (with helpful advice from some close observers) hadn’t
noticed the flaw in the points system and corrected it. This year,
players will earn the same amount of points for finishing 11th
through 20th, which will correct the problem and reward
players for consistently placing in the top 20 (click
here to see new points list).
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