Gary Larrabee

Publisher Richard Ayer confirmed this morning that North Shore Golf Magazine will, in fact, continue publishing in 2012, its 10th consecutive year, a wonderfully surprising reversal of what had been his decision of a few weeks ago to take a one-year hiatus.

This comes as most welcoming news to the golf community in what shapes up as an historic year in the region. The Massachusetts Amateur will be played in July at Tedesco Country Club in Marblehead and the New England PGA Championship is slated for August at Salem and Kernwood, two terrific Donald Ross-designed layouts. A great year for tournament golf on the North Shore.

Details will be forthcoming as soon as possible.

• Don’t kid yourself. This WAS deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say. Patriots in ideal poisition to win their fourth Super Bowl and they gift wrap it to the Giants — again. Not eerie. Spooky and then some. Tom Brady was right on in his post-mortem. Giants made the plays; Patriots didn’t when it was ALL on the line. Don’t be surprised if the Pats are right back there next February, though, in New Orleans. But blown opportunities are painful and take many moons from which to recover.
• Happy 200th birthday to arguably the greatest novelist of the last two centuries — Charles Dickens.
• Yet another “Greatest 100” golf courses list; two, in fact, from the one and only George Peper at Links magazine. A novelty, so it works nicely. Real-time rankings, based on up-to-the-minute golfer ratings delivered to the Links magazine website for the Top 100 courses in America and the world. Our three local standbys all were properly, though inaccurately, ranked in the Links100. Cypress Point is No. 1 on both lists, followed by Pine Valley. Myopia comes in No. 41, followed by Essex at 83 and Salem at 92. Personally, I believe Salem should be No. 1 on any North Shore list, followed by Myopia and Kernwood, then Essex. But this is only one man’s opinion. And, like it or not, the great old layouts continue to rank higher than our new “gems,” i.e. Turner Hill, Renaissance, etc. The Country Club’s composite layout ranks No. 23 in the U.S., with Yale No. 33, Boston GC 42, Old Sandwich 47, Kittansett 48, Newport 61, Wannamoisett 75. World-wide, The Country Club gets the 44th slot, followed by Yale (among New England courses) at 70, Myopia 84, Boston 85, Old Sandwich 91 and Kittansett 92. No matter how you list them, we have a phenomenal stable of courses in the region, and these lists are only the tip of the iceberg. Provide your own input at Linksmagazine.com.

Our condolences go out to the families and friends of two special people from the North Shore who passed on recently:

1. Dr. Frederick O. Buckley, a prominent local physician and patriarch of the super athletic Buckley clan of Marblehead and points south and west. His son, Fred, carries on his father’s extraordinary medical legacy as an equally prominent surgeon at North Shore Medical Center.

2. Bruce Boal, long-time Tedesco golfer and founder of Boaleeco, an exporter of technical and engineering equipment for schools and universities; a true Renaissance man with an amazing variety of athletic, civic and charitable interests.

On another matter, I finally referreed on the sparkling new Beverly High basketball court and it is magnificent; a court worthy of a big-time college basketball program, let alone a North Shore public high school. The restoration of the entire fieldhouse building came out beautifully.

The beauty of the Henry Cabot Lodge Fieldhouse in Beverly motivated me to finally check out the one other local gym/fieldhouse that had been in renovation mode  —  at Danvers High. I was not disappointed. Though the game floor does not have a wood surface, it is the next best thing —  a sneaker-friendly linoleum top surface that almost looks like wood, with a bonus under layer that has a little “give,” as all top-level courts have.

Because the fieldhouse work was part of the overall Danvers High refurbishing project heavily supported by state funds, the floor surface could not be expanded, i.e. walls could not be moved. Thus, the indoor track, including sprint lanes, had to be a similar makeup as the basketball floor. Thus the end result

Moreover, Sullivan rejected the concept of changing the direction of the game court (currently north-south), to ensure the retention of the other two same-size courts and maxmizing usage of the courts  by the town’s various basketball factions.

A very nice venue for a potential championship boys team that may have the makings of the best team in school history. The Falcons have a biggie at home tomorrow night (Jan. 31) at 7 versus Beverly.

Lo and behold it’s Super Bowl Week. I believe the Giants will be favored by one point, or the rematch may become  a “pick ’em” by the Vegas oddsmakers by kickoff time Sunday. There are far more reasons why the Patriots should lose Sunday than win, but I like the Pats to pull a surprise:  Patriots 27, Giants 23. Botton line, as I wrote earlier: Tom Brady, the offensive line and the receivers MUST excel, Gronkowski or no Gronkowski. Time for Beauty Boy Brady to show us his best stuff. If he doesn’t show it here, his image will be tarnished significantly.

Sad to report that publisher Richard Ayer has suspended publication of North Shore Golf and Tennis magazine in 2012 after an exciting nine-year run. It’s all about the economy. Advertising, which was the magazine’s only financial mechanism, simply hadn’t measured up the last few years during these rocky economic times.

I’ve been honored to serve in a leading editorial position for Richard, his first editor, Gary Trask, and his current editor, Bob Albright.

It’s not easy to rejuvenate a print publication after it has taken a hiatus, but if anyone can get it back in gear in 2013, it is Richard.

In lieu of NSG&T, this blog will try and fill in selected gaps as golf news is made locally in 2012, especially regards the Massachusetts Amateur in July at Tedesco and the New England PGA Championship at Salem and Kernwood in August.

Our condolences go out to the family and friends of Hugh Nelson, on the legendary Beverly High athlete’s passing on January 17 at the age of 94. Hugh was a superb baseball and football player, a member of the Beverly High Athletic Hall of Fame and for many years a fierce but friendly competitor on the Beverly Golf and Tennis Club golf course. A nicer man you will never meet. My father was one of Hugh’s chums from their high school days and could talk about his greatness as an athlete and man for hours. Hugh in return thought the world of my dad, “Ol'” Russ Larrabee. It was an honor to know Hugh, most recently through the friendship my son Kevin shared with Hugh’s grandson, Jeff.

Tricky dribbling — with an occasional fiddlin’ and diddlin,’ as the inimitable Johnny Most used to say — all over the place today, but starting with a plea that you read a couple phenomenal journalistic efforts from the December 12, 2011 issue of Sports Illustrated, which honored Pat Summitt and Mike Krzyzewski as its Sportswoman and Sportsman of the Year.

Read Alexander Wolff’s masterpiece on the honored pair first, then move to L. Jon Wertheim’s look back to the 1976 recipient, Chris Evert. She still looks great except for the plastic surgery. 

Then chuckle at some of the silly things  said by Wayne Gretky, the ’82 honoree and second greatest hockey player of all time after Boston’s No. 4, Bobby Orr. Gretzky, maybe not in disrepect, just ignorance, said of receiving the SI Sportsman of the Year award, “It was one of those awards that I thought, Wow, a hockey player or a guy living in Canada could never win this.” Well, Boston’s — and Canada’s — own Robert Gordon Orr was duly honored in 1970. Pay attention, Waynzo.

Same issue, way in back, SI’s legendary photographer Walter Iooss, Jr. shows he’s an exceptional writer as well in “The Education of Walter Iooss, Jr,” in which he shares candid memories of his fifty years at the finest sports publication ever produced. I’m saving it. You may too.

Tiger Woods skipping the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Classic in San Diego to play in Dubai?? I’m shocked, shocked, the way I’m shocked when the sun rises in the east every morning. No American athlete/golfer possesses the depth of greed this man does. We’re getting the same old Tiger in 2012. It’s all about the money.

Golf is in a terrible Catch 22 when it comes to Tiger. Most people despise — or at least loathe — him as a person. I shan’t explain it. But many people in golf accept the fact that the world of golf business does much better when Tiger is playing and winning, though this agent hopes he never wins another tournament. I repeat: Tiger is the worst face golf can project, and, sadly, he remains the No. 1 story in golf no matter what he does. This would be the perfect time for “Lefty” Mickelson to take over the game for two or three years so we can forget about the womanizer for a long, long time. C’mon Phil, one more great run as champion.

Belated congrats to Boston’s Dan Davis, a former leading voice on Boston sports radio and whose call of Doug Flutie’s miracle pass to Gerard Phelan in 1984 will live forever in the region’s sports folklore, on his retirement after 20 years at ESPN Radio (ever since it was inaugurated). At the same time, congrats to Marblehead favorite son Doug Brown, who followed Davis to ESPN Radio in 1993 and is still going strong, most recvently gaining major acclaim for his coverage of the 2010 World Cup in Germany.

Hope you caught where Don Carter, Mr. PBA Bowling, the sport’s first superstar, died January 5 in Miami at 85. When bowling was one of the primary sports staples of national (and local, i.e. Candlepin matches every Saturday at noon on Channel 5 with Don Gillis) television, Carter was the Arnold Palmer of his time.

He was a star on the weekly ABC-televised PBA Tour events on Saturday afternoons, but enjoyed an even larger focus on the weekly pre-filmed head-to-head matches syndicated to the local TV markets. The enthusiasn leve of the galleries and broadcasters for those matches were incredible.

Great to see the Danversd High boys basketball team rolling along at 7-1 behind the coaching of John Walsh and the “big 3” performances of George Merry, Nick Bates and Nick McKenna. This team may have a Division 3 state championship in its future. This is certainly the best DHS squad since the Falcons’ last Northeastern Conference championship unit in 1975, coached by John McGrath and led by Ed Gieras, Mike Hennessey and Pat Veilleux, the current girls’ coach. That’s 37 years and counting.

Makes me also reflect back 45 years to 1967 when your humble servant wrapped up an inauspicious DHS cage career and McGrath was in his fourth season as coach. My last two teams were snake-bitten and deserved better, though we had our moments. After McGrath had won the NEC title in 1964, his first year in charge thanks to the talents of Jeff Ryback, the late great Bob Cunninghma, Steve Lenz, Bob Bonner, John Keane and Pat O’Shea, his second team went 7-7 in the Conference (my sophomore year).

We had terrific chances to win the next two NEC titles, but my junior year our captain and leading scorer, Jon Tiplady (recently retired from the Danvers Police Department as Captain), suffered a serious knee injury the next-to-last game of the regular season, forcing him to miss the final game, a showdown at Winthrop for the title. We both came in 12-1 in NEC play. We’d beaten Winthrop earlier by 10 in Danvers in Vye Gym before what was believed to be the largest home crowd in DHS hoop annals to that date. But we’d lost a four-pointer at Gloucester later on, setting the stage for the winner-take-all rematch.

The new Winthrop gym was packed before the junior varsity game even started. By the time we took the floor for warmups it was so hot in there I could hardly breathe. Oh, I almost forgot. As sixth man, I got the call to take Jon’s place in the starting lineup. We were all crushed for Jon. He was with us that Friday night in uniform. It must have killed him not to be able to play. Anyway, the game went back and forth throughout, tight all the way. We led for the last time at 48-47 when I hit a top-of-the-key jumper with 2:45 left. Sadly, I was only 7-for-23 from the floor for the night; not exactly a fairy tale performance. But we were right there. Doubly sadly, we couldnt’ score another point and lost 50-48.

Even worse, several of us had to face the music the next morning at 7:30 for college board exams. Our consolation prize was a trip to the Tech Tourney and what turned into two games on the old Boston Garden parquet. We won our first over South Boston, then fell in Game 2 to Don Bosco. At least we got to play on the floor that Cousy, Havlicek, Russell and Sam Jones made famous. That was grand.

My tale of pity continues. The next year, my senior year along with Terry Baronauskas, Paul Strauch, Neil Berry and Peter Dzierzak, among others, we had another shot at the title. We entered the next-to-last game of the Conference season at 11-1, one game behind 12-0 Swampscott (they’d beaten us in Danvers), with a Tuesday afternoon date in Swampscott’s aging bandbox gym. It snowed Tuesday, so the game was pushed back another day, giving me two sleepless nights in succession.

Wednesday, gametime 5 p.m. I’m back in  my sixth man role for a third season (doesn’t say much for my improvement over three years, does it?). I hit three mid-range jumpers the second half, two late in the fourth quarter, and we appeared headed for victory, leading by 54-48 with two minutes left. But we botched this one as well, falling 55-54, thanks to another fatal scoreless spell at the end. No Tech Tourney this time. We got bludgeoned by eventual state champion Melrose, coached by future Celtics assistant coach John Killilea, in two non-leaguers the final week and finished 12-8 when 13-7 would have gotten us in (65% was the requisite winning percentage in those days.

Oh well, we had a lot of fun screwing up our championship chances two years running. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Just to have the chance to play in those two title-determining games was unforgettable.

Don’t worry, McGrath got over it, too. His 1970 squad led by Lon Cohen, Jay Veilleux and Dana White won the Northeastern Conference, washing away the eerie memories we’d created in 1966 and ’67. Then we all moved on to our lives beyond DHS.

Mark O’Meara, one of the few golfers to win the Masters and the British Open in the same year, will be the headline honoree at the 2012 Francis Ouimet Scholarship Fund annual banquet slated for Monday, May 7, at the Boston Marriott Copley Place.

O’Meara, a top PGA Tour player from the mid-1980s through the 1990s, won his lone two majors in 1998, the year he was named PGA Player of the Year.  He is also well known as a friend and confidante of Tiger Woods.

The Ouimet Dinner draws between 1500 and 2000 annually, making it the largest one-night golf banquet in the country. It has been rumored, but not confirmed, that Arnold Palmer, a former Ouimet Fund honoree for his distinguished lifetime service to the game, will be the first repeat honoree for the 2013 event, which will mark the 100th anniversary of Francis Ouimet’s stunning victory at the U.S. Open at The Country Club. The Brookline club will host he 2013 United States Amateur.

Sponsorship and ticket opportunities for this year’s banquet are available by contacting the Ouimet Fund’s offices at 774-430-9090.

It was deja vu all over again when Salem CC’s Steven Dilisio and Far Corner’s Nick McLaughlin  were honored as repeat Junior champions at the Massachusetts Golf Association “Salute to Champions” dinner January 5 at Wellesley Country Club.

McLaughlin, the St. John’s Prep senior who also plays out of Wentworth-by-the-Sea, was recognized for winning the overall Junior title for the second time in three years. He heads off to the University of Virginia in the fall.

Dilisio, from Swampscott, was recognized in for becoming last summer only the second player (the other being newly-turned pro Peter Uihlein) to win three consecutive Boys division titles. Steven, who turns 14 this month, will move up to the Pre-Junior division for the 2012 Junior being played at Oakley August 6-8.

Both young men spoke graciously and briefly to the audiecne of 200 after recieving their commemorative plaques from emcee Mike Dowling of Channel 5 Sports. They have both made their North Shore golf family proud. We wish Nick all the best as he moves on to the next chapter of his tournament life. As for Steven, he knows there will be a bullseye on his chest as the player to beat in the Pre-Junior division (ages 14 and 15) after graduating from the Boys’ group.

Dilisio was sporting a cast on his right wrist, the result of a basketball injury. But it will be completely healed before he starts revving up his game in the spring.

Among North Shore-connected attendees were Carriage Pine’s Ken Whalley, Salem’s George Demerritt, Haverhill’s Joe D’Orazio, Dedham’s (ex of Essex) Denny Goodrich, (Essex’)Bill Van Faasen, Beverly native Jane Frost (McLaughlin’s teacher), Kernwood’s Jack Taymore and, of course, North Andover’s Becky Blaeser, the MGA’s communications  director. Hubby Frank Vana, two-time MGA champion and 2011 Amateur runnerup, was home with the kids nursing his shoulder, which recently under went successful surgery.

Norton’s Ryan Riley, winner of the 2011 Amateur and Fourball (with Herbie Aikens) received the Richard Haskell Player of the Year Award, named for the late former MGA executive director who grew up in Ipswich and played at Essex before moving on to The Country Club.  Chelso Barrett of the Winchendon School Golf Club received the Christopher Cutler Rich Junior Player of the Year Award after placing runnerup at the USGA Junior championship. The award is given in memory of the Hamilton boy who died at the age of 10 and was a junior golf champion at Myopia.

A moment of silence was offered to mark the recent passing of three Massachusetts golf notables: Paul Harney, Bill Flynn and Oliver “Biff” Kelley.

Hard to believe that the newspaper of record for Boston’s North Shore and the most historic city in the region — The Salem News — would ditch their one weekly columnist who is not only considered the city’s foremost historian, but who writes of this area’s amazing history in what had become must-reading in the newspaper’s Monday editions for many years.

But it’s true. Jim McAllister published his last weekly column in The News in October.  I, as a local historian and Salem News staff alumnus, is dismayed beyond words as to this development. Granted, the newspaper publishing business has become a daunting task with the internet and the economy in general.

But to dismiss the paper’s local historian’s weekly column is shocking and disgraceful from this observer’s humble perspective.

I will print an explanation from The News upon receiving an email/voicemail reply from its editorial leadership.

I hope the perpetrators of this act will reconsider and bring McAllister back to its readers.

Dick Drew, after nearly 30 years as superintendent at Olde Salem (Mass.) Greens golf course, Salem’s municipal nine-holer, has called it a career. Drew, 65, finished 28-plus years in charge at Olde Salem on August 11, the day after he turned the magic retirement age.

“I loved the job from the very first day,” says Drew, who has moved from his long-time home in Hamilton and relocated 75 miles west in Thomson, Conn., just over the Massachusetts border, to live with his son and his family.

“I’m proud the way I ran the place with loyal staff and supportive city officials. I rarely if ever got complaints. But the job was getting harder and harder to do. The fact my son and his wife invited me to come live with them and help with their property, with grandaughter Courtney (she’s 11) and their two dogs (Bailey and Brady), made it an easy time to bow out.”

After spending close to 15 years working under Lester Allen and Dean Robertson at Kernwood Country Club on the other side of town, Salem officials needed someone to replace the retiring Norman Barnes at Olde Salem. His boss at Kernwood recommended Drew and the rest is history.

Dick Drew WAS Olde Salem Greens for most of the next three decades. The Lynn native and UMass-Stockbridge alumnus made the Wilson Road layout the best it’s ever been.

He came from rock solid golfing stock. His grandfather, Richard Drew, was a member at Salem Country Club, while his father, also Richard, played at Happy Valley (now Larry Gannon) in Lynn, then Wenham. Dick the youngest was swinging a golf club by the time he was 6.

“The game got in my blood early in life and never left me,” Dick reasons.

When he first arrived at Olde Salem — he’d never seen the place until the first day he started working there — “I thought I’d gone back 40 years in time,” he admitted, “at least in terms of equipment they had. The stuff was old and in short supply. Norman Barnes helped me get my feet wet, explained how things got done. Then when I asked the (Recreation) Commission (which oversees the operation of the course) for some funding, they gave it to me. It was like $40,000 they had earmarked for the Bowditch House, I think, but they were able to pass it on to me because of the emergency situation I’d described.

“I bought some equipment and over the years thyey pretty much gave me funds when I really needed them, as long as I could justify the need and project significant savings down the road.”

Drew appeciates the support he received from the Commission over the years, especially from people like Tim Noonan, Jerry Lavoie and Kathy O’Leary, as well as from Mayors Salvo, Usovicz, Harrington and Driscoll. He also is grateful for the relationships he had with his immediate bosses, Tom Foley, Larry McIntire and Doug Bollen, the city’s Recreation Superintendents.

Most important, he recognized the people who worked alongside him on the course, led by Bill Castonguay (20 years plus), John Wright and Mike Gallagher, among others.

Dick and his crew gained satisfaction by performing the routine daily duties that made Olde Salem shine in the eyes of the course’s hundreds of regulars; regular maintenance, such as upkeeping the tees, greens, fairways, bunkers and drainage, the cart paths, as best they could with limited resources.

“We never lost a green in all  my years. That’s special to me,” Drew said. “We rebuilt a bunker once in a while and eliminated a few steep bunkers.”

Drew was pleased the Rec Commission never turned to a management company to run the operation. “We’ve had good people working inside the clubhouse, people like Al Zendarski, for many years and Hago Harrington more recently,” Drew said. “That would have been money wasted.”

He would have liked to have seen nine additional holes built, and for good reason. “We’ve lost a lot of money since The Meadow in Peabody, an 18-hole course, opened up,” he explained. “But I learned a long time ago in this job that politics sometimes wins out.

“I also wish — and I tried several times — to get a certain percentage of the profits made from the golf course to go back in the golf course budget annually, but it never happened. All the revenues always went back into the city funds and we’d have to ask for money on an as needed basis. A request for funds often took six months to be acted on, good or bad.”

Now the torch has been passed on to Paul Lever, formerly of Rowley CC (Carriage Pines), and Drew wishes him all the success in the world. Dick is now happily taking care of grandchild and two dogs and walking through the nearby woods. He’s earned it.