Golf

Each year I have the pleasure of interviewing all the ladies’ and men’s club champions prior to The Brunswick Beacon Tournament of Champions.

This is the sixth year the Beacon has sponsored this event, and it gets bigger and better each year.

It all began in 2002, when I first started writing this column. I thought it would be a hoot to interview all the champions and then feature them in Golf Gab, the men one week, the women the next. It was fun talking to the best of the best, the guys and gals who, for this one special tournament, came out on top.

When you look up “albatross” in the dictionary, you will read about large, web-footed birds, mainly found in the Southern Hemisphere, having a hooked beak and long narrow wings. However, if you look up “albatross” in a golfer’s glossary, you will see it is a term used in Britain for a score of 3-under par for a hole. In the U.S., this score is more commonly referred to as a double-eagle.

I started hearing rumors about a gal at Ocean Ridge who had three holes-in-one in the past year, then I heard she had another, and then another…

Naaah! Five holes-in-one in a year? Impossible, I thought. Someone was pulling my leg.

But the rumors persisted and a couple of people sent me e-mails, someone else called me about it.

I decided to track it down and folks, it’s as true as the sun shining outside my office window this morning.

Last week I had the opportunity to chat with Joe Louis Barrow Jr. in the clubhouse of The First Tee of Brunswick County at Cinghiale Creek. For 45 minutes we traded stories of boxing, kids and golf. I know a little bit about boxing since my father had been an amateur boxer in his youth and often enjoyed sparring with me when I was a kid, teaching me the difference between a right uppercut and a left jab.

Joe Louis was his hero, and now I was talking to his son, Joe Louis Barrow Jr.

It doesn’t get any better than that.