The Sonoma Golf Club was the site for the recent 22nd annual Hanna Boys Center Golf Classic, with 80 players wandering the fairways and greens of the classic layout playing in a scramble format.
In the gross division, first place went to the team of Cole Hemingway, Greg Hemingway, Matt Hemingway and John Snyder with a combined score of 58, followed in second place Maury Gallagher, Dennis Grandall, Bill Barry and Steve Scudero’s 59.
The net division saw a phenomenal score of 49 give the team of Steve Hunter, Chuck Patton, Jeff Ketchu and James Cochrane first place, while a score of 50 gave Russ Colombo, Tim Meyers, Daryl Weinroth and Mike Brossier second place.
The Noel Merten’s Perpetual Trophy went to Keith Scheeler, Sean Demming, Alan Adelman and Robert Lahaie.
In the longest drive competition, Sadik Bradbury took home the men’s title, while Julie Meyer claimed the women’s.
Wayne Coronel won the straightest drive for the men, while the ladies went unclaimed.
The closest-to-the-pin on the fourth hole went to the participant that only wanted to be known by one name, Gerrard, with a shot to 10 feet, 11 inches. Greg Labagh claimed the seventh with a shot to 57. Brian Spanswick mastered the difficult 14th with a shot to 5-4, while Deming showed one reason he was on a winning team with a shot to 7-3 on the 17th.
••
Next week sees the start of the 2015 PGA Tour season at the Frys.com Open at Silverado Resort’s North Course.
The event, which moved from CordeValle in San Martin, will give locals the chance to see some of the top players in the world up close.
Although Rory McIlroy has indicated he will not play, England’s Lee Westwood has committed along with defending champion Jimmy Walker, Hunter Mahan and fellow Ryder Cup player and fan favorite Matt Kuchar, who announced last week that he will join the field for PGA Tour’s return to the Napa resort.
The North Course hosted the Kaiser Invitational from 1968 to 1976, when it then became the Anheuser-Busch Golf Classic, and ran through 1980 on the PGA Tour, while the Champions Tour made a stop on the South Course from 1989 through 2002.
Players such as Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Johnny Miller (who is now part of a group that owns the resort) and Ben Crenshaw all claimed titles at the classic course, which Miller has put his own touch on.
After taking over in 2010, Miller updated the North Course in hopes of getting a PGA Tour or Champions Tour event – the changes he did worked and now the best players in the world will be able to enjoy harvest time in the wine country. For tickets or more information, go to frysopengolf.com.
The Fry’s.com Open is the first of three PGA Tour events for the Northern California region on the 2014-15 season.
January will see the annual stop at Pebble Beach for the AT&T Pro Am, while the World Golf Championship Match Play event will be at San Francisco’s Harding Park in May, and now we know who
the presenting sponsor will be: Cadillac.
The GM division already sponsors the Cadillac Championship, another World Golf Championship event, at Doral, but they have stepped up and agreed to sponsor the 2015 edition at Harding.
It will officially be known as the World Golf Championships Cadillac Match Play.
This will be the best opportunity for local fans to see the top-64 players in the world as they play a new format match play championship, which will have the players broken up into four-man groups, where they will play a round-robin format.
From those groups, the top point getter will then move onto the round-of-16 on Saturday morning, while the quarterfinals will take place Saturday afternoon, and then the semis and finals on Sunday morning and afternoon, respectively.
This will give fans the opportunity to see all players for at least three days, versus the old format which saw some top-players lose their first match and be out of the tournament.
Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased at worldgolfchampionships.com.
••
For those looking for a high level event even closer to home, the Sonoma Golf Club will host the Stocker Cup Oct. 21 to 24.
The event, which is named for the late Peter Stocker, who was the original developer behind Chardonnay Golf Club in Napa and started Pacific Union Realty, is leaving its home at The Preserve in Carmel and coming to Sonoma.
This is one of the more prestigious mid-amateur events in the country and always attracts a strong field.
The event will see the mid-amateur players compete for the Stocker Cup trophy individually, while also playing with another partner in a team competition.
For additional information, go to stockercup.com.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: