One swing of a golf club brought $25,000 to the Hockomock Area YMCA, but it didn’t happen on a golf course.
It happened at Fenway Park.
To kick off the Dell Technologies Championship, which returns to TPC Boston Aug. 30-Sept. 3, eight local charities that benefit from the PGA Tour’s stop in Boston plus one celebrity charity gathered earlier this month at Fenway Park for the Dell Technologies Championship Charity Shootout.
The challenge took place on the field at Fenway with each charity’s representative and a local media member or celebrity forming two-man teams and hitting a shot from behind home plate to a target located in center field, just inside the 420-foot sign. At 12 feet, WBZ TV Sports Director Steve Burton was closest to the pin in the final round winning $25,000 for the Hockomock Area YMCA.
Coming in second was another charity headquartered in Norton but serving the entire state — Mass Golf, formerly known as the Massachusetts Golf Association.
Celebrity golf in the works?
A celebrity golf tournament could be coming to Boston sometime next year.
The idea is being headed by a senior pro golfer and a city councilor.
“They have a concept that’s still, I wouldn’t even say in infantile stages — I would say still in people’s heads about bringing a tournament next year,” Boston City Councilor Tim McCarthy told the Boston Herald. “He had a lot of great ideas about little changes and little things in the course that he would do for a tournament.”
“He” is Tom Pernice Jr., 58, who ranks 22nd in the PGA Champions Tour. Pernice declined to comment to the Herald on specifics but said “he has friends here in the Boston area,” and that he’s in an “exploratory” phase of looking at bringing a tournament involving celebrity golf to the George Wright Golf Course, one of two owned by the city of Boston.
George Wright was recently named the eighth-best golf course you can play on in Massachusetts in Golfweek’s 2018 rankings.
“I think if it was done right, something like this could possibly be done,” McCarthy said. “My concern was the turnaround. To turn around an enormous event like this in a year is very aggressive, to say the least. If this was a concept now for 2020 or 2021, where you could build it up and ramp it up, and cross all the T’s and dot all the I’s, it would be a little more acceptable.”
Fathers and sons in Seekonk
Ledgemont Country Club in Seekonk recently played host to the junior division of Mass Golf’s Father & Son Championship.
The team of Brian O’Leary of Walpole Country Club and Andrew O’Leary of nearby Pawtucket Country Club made birdie on two of their final four holes at Ledgemont to post a score of 3-under par 68 and capture the championship.
It marks the second such title for Brian, who won the junior division title with his son Patrick in 2011. It is his first with Andrew, who is 18 years old and heading to the University of Notre Dame later this month to begin his freshman year in South Bend.
“My brother won this with my dad in 2011, so he always for the past seven years has said that he has a state championship and I don’t,” said Andrew. “So, it’s nice to kind of get back at him.”
Look who’s buying
Greg Watkins used a driving iron to record a hole-in-one at the 17th hole at The Links at Mass Golf.
I reported earlier this year that my brother-in-law scored an ace at the 12th hole at Norton Country Club. While we were playing Sunday morning, Dan stepped up with his same 5-hybrid, hitting the ball about a foot behind the hole. It rolled back, only to stop about two inches before the cup.
Nice birdie, Dan.
Got a hole-in-one or other golf accomplishment to report? Contact me at the email address listed below.
And play well.
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