Gilroy
– It started with a hailstorm and finished under as pleasant a
Thursday afternoon sky as any golfer could hope for at Eagle Ridge
GC.
Welcome to the weather weirdness of the past few months in the
Bay Area.
Gilroy – It started with a hailstorm and finished under as pleasant a Thursday afternoon sky as any golfer could hope for at Eagle Ridge GC.
Welcome to the weather weirdness of the past few months in the Bay Area.
The TCAL 36-Man golf tournament is an important enough event on the schedule to push ahead despite inclement weather, said Gilroy head coach Eric Kuwada. His Mustangs finished third on 222 behind Palma (205) and Salinas (208), and ahead of Hollister (229), Live Oak (258) and North Salinas (318) at the six-team nine-hole competition at Eagle Ridge.
“Normally, we’d have canceled it,” said Kuwada of the event, which started under a flurry of hail at the Gilroy golf course.
That wasn’t about to happen on as holy a day as there is in golf – the Masters at Augusta National also kicked off Thursday, a continent away .
“It was tough,” said Live Oak No. 2 Nick Firato, who shot a 53. “The weather was tough, the drops were, like this huge, the course is tough.”
Gilroy was led by No. 2 Jami Binowski’s 41. Top seed Stephen Freeth was quick out of the gates only to falter when the weather actually started getting better.
In the shotgun-start format, Freeth’s No. 1 group started on the par-4 fifth, which he birdied as the skies opened up. An auspicious start, but Freeth went on to triple-bogey 9 and 4 to wind up with a 46.
Gilroy’s Estevan Gonzalez (44) was on in two on the par-5 7th. A 200-yard drive from the tee put the No. 4 man for GHS over the bunkers. His short iron put him within 12 feet of the flag with a chance for eagle.
“I rimmed the putt, it just lipped out,” said Gonzalez, who settled for a birdie.
A triple bogey on 4 – a disastrous hole for the ‘Stangs – prevented Gonzalez from finishing in the low 40’s.
TCAL 36-Man
1. Palma 205
2. Salinas 208
3. Gilroy 222
4. Hollister 229
5. Live Oak 258
6. N. Salinas 318
Gilroy scores
(prefix denotes seed)
1-Stephen Freeth 46
2-Jami Binowski 41
3-Jordan Miller 46
4-Estevan
Gonzalez 44
5-Ryan Clark 49
6-Chad Wilson 44
