Written by The TCGA
Golfers of the Southern Tier,
After at 62 in the first round, not even a shout from the “gallery” or epic pins could deter 2009 Player of the Year Keith Chesk and Garrett Feduke from winning the TCGA Best Ball event at BlueStone and CV State Park. Congrats on the victory Gentlemen! Finishing just a shot back were the Sladish brothers, which is nice to see as Chris’ wrist seems to be doing just fine now so don’t let him ask you for strokes! The teams of Scott Sanyshyn and Josh Robinson tied with TCGA Veterans John Govern and Mike Jaros for 3rd place honors.
A warm congratulation goes out to our Senior Champs from this past weekend. At the difficult and demanding En-Joie Golf Course Tom McCarthy fired a delightful 72 on his way to the low round of the day and the title in the 60-64 year old age bracket. Mike Schulte fired a neat 76 to win the 50-59 division. Finally, the ageless Mark Rappaport shot a 79 to win the super senior 65+ division. Congrats on the solid golf men.
Every year we give scholarships to high school players that have shown great strides on the golf course and in the classroom and this year will be no different. We have been able to generate a great sponsor base over the past few years so that we don’t have to raise the price of tournaments to continue to provide these scholarships to the Junior players of our area who are the future talent of the TCGA. An example of recent success is Mike Wesko who was our 2009 Scholarship recipient. Wesko, a UE Graduate, is a remarkably nice kid and anyone who knows him will echo those sentiments. He is also an outstanding golfer and was able to qualify for and make the team at Methodist College. For those of you who are unaware, Methodist is to D3 golf like UCLA was to College basketball. Methodist is home to one of the top Professional Golf Management Programs in the country and as a result garners the best players that want to get into PGM. We are very proud that Mike was able to use his scholarship to positive pursuits and it should make you the players of the TCGA happy no know that you are helping lay a foundation for the future of golf in our region.
Along those lines our Junior Program is thriving thanks to the efforts of Andrew Strom and Trevor Fiedler. This past year we joined with the Youth Golf Association to be a part of a benefit tournament to honor the late Todd Sanzo who was a past participant, as many of you know, in both Junior and Men’s TCGA events. The Sanzo family with the help of the TCGA and YGA ran a tournament to benefit Junior Golf in the area last year at En-Joie Golf Course. The tournament was a great success! We had a wonderful turn out and it was a beautiful event. Part of the proceeds helped with the scholarships as well as the building of a new indoor golf facility on Robinson Hill Road at the Community Sportsplex. The facility will open on a more broad scale this winter and there will be camps for Juniors, Men and Women alike. All of these efforts are being done from the vantage point of Not for Profit and to benefit junior golf. So we are reliant on participation in tournaments like the Todd Sanzo Memorial and sponsors to help build the foundation of Junior Golf for years to come. Information on how to participate is on our website and if you can’t make the tournament singer songwriter Jared Campbell will be playing a concert for the dinner afterwards. All this takes place August 7th and we would love to have a packed house (spots for the tournament are filling up quickly). The following is a link to download an entry form for the tournament:
http://www.sanzospecialties.com/addimages/TODD-GOLF-entryform.pdf
Next on the tournament schedule will be the TCGA Open at the Links @ Hiawatha Landing and Vestal Hills Country Club on August 21st and 22nd. It should be a great field with solid venues as Mike Deuel attempts to repeat as champion. The field is open to pros and amateurs alike and it is historically the most competitive field of the year.
NOTE TO CLUBS!!!! The team competition was scheduled during the Binghamton CC member guest and as a lot of the players from our clubs play in that tournament we will be postponing the TEAM Competition til September 12th @ Endwell Greens and do an annual wrap up and awards banquet. We appreciate the understanding and look forward to seeing you all at Hiawatha for the Open!
Good Luck and Play Hard!
The TCGA