A Day To Remember

HANOVER – A lot of golfers are a bundle of nerves on the first tee of a golf tournament.

Cody Danforth had more reason to feel that way this weekend than most.

Scratch that. He had more reason to be nervous than all of the others in the field of 128 players.

Combined.

Following his Friday qualifying round in the 44th annual Tommy Keane Invitational Danforth knew he was going to drop to one knee at that first tee and propose to longtime girlfriend Jen.

That would be Jen Keane, great-granddaughter of the man for whom the eponymous tournament is named.

As if that wasn’t nerve-racking enough, Danforth was going to pop the question at the base of a plaque honoring the legend who served at HCC from 1922-66. And he he was going to do it with two dozen or so relatives hanging on his every syllable, and a ring in his pocket that had arrived at his parents’ mailbox from a Boston jeweler just in the knick of time.

“My knees were shaking,” admitted Danforth after his Saturday afternoon match. “But it was the perfect moment.”

It was a moment he saw coming four years ago.

“I knew the day I met her I was going to marry her,”  said Danforth, who met Keane in Colorado, where they live.

Jim Keane, Jen’s father, had been in on the secret since the March day when Cody asked for his daughter’s hand, fittingly on a Florida course.

“That was a nerve-racking day also,” Danforth said. “I had to build up the courage to ask him. It took me 18 holes.”

While Jim and Deb Keane knew what was coming their son Chris, brother of the bride-to-be, had no clue even while playing the 18-hole qualifier with a partner who would be his future brother-in-law.

“I couldn’t tell him,” Danforth said, almost a little sheepishly. “If he had known he would have spilled the beans.”

And so as the extended family gathered at the first tee under the pretense of taking a photo for the annual Keane Christmas card the secret was known by only a scant few and Jen wasn’t one of them.

“I was very surprised,” she said. “I figured it would happen in the future, but not this weekend. This is my favorite weekend to come home and see family, and this is the best one ever.”

She’ll get no argument from her fiancé, even if, with a little more than golf on his mind he and Chris shot an 89 in qualifying and were dismissed to the consolation round of the third flight with a loss in Saturday morning match play.

“It has been really incredible,” Danforth said after his afternoon match. “The timing and the way it all worked out could not have been better. ”

DIVOTS
Advancing to Sunday morning’s semifinal matches are a few familiar names in the Tommy Keane annals.

In one bracket the father-son team of defending champions Shane and Nick MacDonald will face off against Pat Pelletier and Adam Pippin. The MacDonalds, bidding for their fifth championship in six years, dispatched Joe King and Lance Pelley, 3&2 in their morning match and knocked off Dean Cashman and Chris Hynes in the afternoon.

Pelletier and Pippin advanced with a 2&1 win over Mike and Mak Lyford in the morning and a victory over former champions Scott Peters and Andy Hydorn by the same score in the afternoon.

On the other side of the bracket Phin Choukas will make his second visit to the semis in as many years, this time with fellow Hanover High golf product Matt Wood. The first-time teammates scored a 2&1 win over Jeff and Alex Lazerowich in the morning before jumping out to a lead over qualifying medalists Mike Hathorn and Mitch Cable. They advanced when Hathorn’s lengthy birdie putt on 18 took a peek at the hole only to change its mind at the end.

Choukas and Wood will square off against another father-son team in Jim and Andrew Jankowski. The former Keane finalists took a 3&2 win over Roger and Tag Demment in the morning and then won a battle of onetime Dartmouth golfers by defeating Jamie Wallace and Rob Henley, 2&1.