The Old And The New – TKI Style

Jay Harvey, Benny Hayes, Nate Choukas and Chris Lincoln enjoyed an
inter-generational match in Saturday morning's Championship flight competition.

HANOVER – Thetford’s Chris Lincoln has been pairing up with former Middlebury College soccer teammate Jay Harvey for a handful of years in the Tommy Keane Invitational and in Friday qualifying they carded a 71 to earn a berth in the Championship flight for the first time.

That was the good news. The bad news was that when they stepped to the first tee Saturday morning they found themselves shaking hands with Benny Hayes and Nate Choukas, who qualified with a 66. The former Hanover High School golf captains are 40-or-so years their juniors.

“I was having flashbacks to playing against older gentlemen when I was that age,” said Harvey, who works as a consultant in Hilton Head, S.C., and comes back to New England just to play in the TKI. “It was fun seeing their swings and the power and accuracy they had.”

The match between old and new was all even until a Choukas birdie on 9 helped spur the younger players to a 3&2 win.

For Lincoln and Harvey, the morning round was a foreshadowing of what would come in the afternoon consolation round when they found themselves going head-to-head with Zach Temple and Mark Lyford, another pair of young turks.

Temple hit a 6-iron to a foot on 12 and watched as the ball took one hop an plopped into the cup for a hole-in-one. He and Lyford went on to a 4&3 win.

“I think I’m tired of 18-year-olds,” a joking Lincoln said after finishing his second round of the day.

Matchups between veterans like Harvey and Lincoln – the two-time defending Hanover Country Club senior champion – and young players like Choukas and Hayes are a hallmark of the Tommy Keane.

“I think it’s great,” Lincoln said between Viagra jokes. “This is the best tournament because it’s all about golf. It’s gross scores. There are no strokes being given. I doesn’t matter who you are playing or how old they are. You just go out and play pure golf.”

While Choukas and Hayes had youth on their side, Lincoln and Harvey had something else going for them, according to the latter.

“When you are older you have experience,” he said. “You get up and down. When we were hitting hybrids to 10 feet from the pin it could have rattled them a little bit. But they stayed steady and played their games. They just outmuscled us at the end.

“I used to hit it 280,” Harvey went on, “and now I hit it 230, 240. Many holes they didn’t even hit their driver, and they were still 20 or 30 yards past us with hybrids and four-woods. The couple times they hit driver I would guess they were 300, 310.”

While they were younger and longer, nothing was given to his team, according to Choukas, who will play next year at Trinity College in Connecticut after taking a gap year.

“We were playing two different games,” he said. “If I’m putting the ball into play I have wedge into every hole whereas those guys know how to get up and down. I might be able to intimidate them if I am hitting the ball well, but if they are getting up and down from everywhere and I’m three-putting then it’s going to go the other way.”

It wasn’t until Choukas’ birdie on 9 that Hayes, who had a strong freshman year at the University of Puget Sound last fall, began to relax.

“We were thinking it could go either way until then,” he said. “Those guys aren’t as long as us, but they know how to putt and they know how to chip.”

Although Lincoln and Harvey dropped their first-ever Championship flight match, they enjoyed the chance to tee it up against two of the better young players around.

“We had nothing to lose,” said Harvey. “No one expected us to beat them and we hung in against two very good players.

“They are gentlemen. They are kids who know the game. Not just the game of golf but the spirit of the game.”

Choukas and Hayes saw their own run in the Championship flight come to an end when they fell to Mike Pollard and Doug Daniels on the 18th hole in their afternoon match.

“We had them early and to be honest, it was ours to lose and we lost it,” said Hayes. “I had a 3-putt on 17 from about 12 feet and that didn’t help. We had our chances and didn’t capitalize. That’s golf.”

No matter if you are 18 or you are 58.

DIVOTS

Nick and Shane MacDonald will square off with Pollard and Daniels in one Championship flight semifinal and Scott Peters and Andy Hydorn will take on Jim and Andrew Jankowski in the other.

The final match of the 39th annual Tommy Keane Invitational will be Sunday afternoon.