Editor”s note: John Berry”s column will return to its normal Saturday slot next weekend.
The final weekend of 2008 has come and gone and the New Year is just around the corner. Our final column of the year reviews the Lake County Amateur Golf Circuit, the Tom Weiskopf golf course going in at Langtry Farms, the arrival of Langtry”s Director of Golf, Johnny Pott, and local golf controversies among other interesting aspects of the past 12 months.
The most intriguing news on the local golf scene has been the planning and building of a new 18-hole golf course at the southernmost end of Lake County along Butts Canyon Road outside Middletown. Located on Guenoc Winery property, the Golf Club at Langtry Farms is a 7,300-yard championship golf course that is expected to open sometime during the late summer or autumn of 2009.
Former British Open champion and highly regarded golf course architect Tom Weiskopf is the designer of Langtry Farms. He made a handful of site visits in 2008, including one instance where a replica of Royal Troon”s Postage Stamp hole was discussed and incorporated into the site plan. Scotland”s Royal Troon was the site of Weiskopf”s British Open triumph in 1963 and Postage Stamp is that course”s signature hole.
Langtry Farms brought in Johnny Pott as its PGA Director of Golf in February of 2008. Pott won five times on the PGA Tour in the 1960s, played on three victorious Ryder Cup teams, and has spent close to four decades in the field of golf course development and management. Pott has been affiliated with Pete Dye”s Carmel Valley Ranch course in Monterey and worked for Landmark in Palm Desert, overseeing the development of a number of name sites.
Aside from his lengthy and impressive golfing resume, Pott has showed himself to be highly intelligent and quite affable. He exudes charm and grace and it is obvious why Langtry Farms hired Johnny Pott to oversee its burgeoning golf operation.
While Langtry Farms is going full stream ahead, other golfing prospects such as Cristallago in north Lakeport, Lakeport Muni at the intersection of highways 29 and 175, and Provinsalia in Clearlake remain on the drawing boards. Blame the inaction on the economy. Riviera Hills Golf Course in the Clear Lake Riviera outside Kelseyville dealt with course alterations in 2008, adding wine grapes to the first fairway and olive trees to the second fairway. Riviera Hills is no longer active in the NCGA and its member tournaments.
The Lake County Amateur Golf Circuit celebrated its 15th season of operating competitive golf tournaments in Lake County. While occasionally criticized for using the same two venues for its 11 events, namely Buckingham and Adams Springs, it keeps plugging along year in and year out under the direction of its founders, Buckingham PGA professional Mark Wotherspoon and this columnist. As I”ve often stated, it”s the only game in town, and in light of the current economy, it makes a lot more sense for someone to enter the Lake County Amateur rather than to travel to the Apple City Amateur (Watsonville) or the Roseville City Amateur during the last week of April.
In 2008, Juan Lopez of Finley accumulated the greatest amount of circuit points to reclaim the title of On The Links Golfer of the Year. Jack Winters of Lower Lake repeated as Senior Golf of the Year. Todd Colbrandt of Middletown was the Net Golfer of the Year, and Ken Kearse of Buckingham was the Senior Net Golfer of the Year.
Jonathan Carlson of Buckingham and Lisa Copeland of Hidden Valley Lake had great golfing years playing regional schedules. The Kelseyville High School golf team qualified for the North Coast Section playoffs in May, and three local high school linksters, namely Nick Schaefer and Jonathan Bridges of Kelseyville and Doug Quinones of Middletown, advanced beyond Sections as individuals and competed in the Tournament of Champions.
For the first time in many years, the Record-Bee found itself in the midst of local golf issues. In May, sports editor Brian Sumpter penned a column about Hidden Valley Lake charging 39 Coastal Mountain Conference golfers $10 each to play in a high school match. The HVL Board kindly refunded the green fees in June. Yet all the while there was finger-pointing in HVL circles regarding responsibility for the short lived policy.
Some pointed the finger at Hidden Valley”s PGA professional, Andy Gonzalez. Many Lake County golfers scoffed at the notion as Gonzalez had little authority as a head pro, even to the point of not being allowed to turn on the television in the pro shop. Gonzalez moved on to become the head pro at Adams Springs. HVL dropped its Hidden Valley Amateur, a point tournament on the NCGA calendar. Nonetheless, Hidden Valley Lake is currently the area”s only 18-hole golf course, has a great practice facility, and is a Billy Bell design.
This usually staid column had its detractors, too. A column about the efforts to rewrite history as it related to George Hoberg”s course record at Rob Roy was interesting enough to be picked up by 11 Internet blogs, but met with dissatisfaction in other circles. Ty Votaw, the No. 2 man at PGA Tour headquarters and the former commissioner of the LPGA, was unhappy with an October column entitled, “Bad Economy is Bad News for the LPGA Tour.” The premise of the article was that financial giants such as Wachovia, Travelers, Zurich and Charles Schwab might fall on hard times and the loss of their sponsorship dollars would impact the PGA Tour.
Votaw contacted the Record-Bee to contest the merits of the article, but subsequent efforts by this columnist to get Votaw to comment proved fruitless. In the end, I figured that Votaw had mistaken the Record-Bee for the Sacramento Bee. Still, I was looking forward to asking him about his thoughts that an Olympic gold medal in golf just might be the equivalent of a major title. On that note, goodbye to 2008 and Happy New Year!
