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| Tommy Keane sharing a moment with President Dwight Eisenhower, himself an avid golfer. |
Good luck to everyone else playing in the Tommy Keane Invitational golf tournament who tries to sort out the family tree sprouting from the namesake of the celebrated Hanover Country Club event, which kicked off its 40th renewal Friday.
“It’s a pretty good tree with a lot of limbs,” Karen (Keane) Campbell of Hartford said with a laugh. “Tommy had six children, who then had their children, and then they had their kids.”
To Campbell’s credit, she has a pretty good handle on the various branches of a family tree that
produced seven competitors with the surname Keane this year. And a total of 13 players who trace their lineage back to the legendary Dartmouth golf coach who headed up the Big Green program and served as the Hanover Country Club pro from 1922 until 1966.
“I may not know all of them well because of the age differences,” Campbell said of the relatives teeing it up in the three-day event, “but I certainly know them.”
The granddaughter of Tommy Keane will stop by the club this weekend to spend time with a lot of relatives she knows a little, and few she knows a lot. Son Evan teamed up with her brother-in-law Stuart Williams last year. This year son Dan is playing with Williams, husband of Campbell’s sister.
Got all that? If you are starting to get confused, relax. Even some of the extended Keane family admit this is a Sudoku puzzle that can be a little difficult to figure out.
“We often laugh about it,” said Christian Mock of Colchester, Vt. “I play with my brother and our cousins. We joke that we’re related somehow to everybody who plays, but we just don’t know it.
“We played with someone on Sunday last year – my cousin Lars (Whitman) and I – after both of our partners left. I think he was like my dad’s cousin’s ex-husband. It was like, ‘Holy cow. Really?’ ”
Mock and his brother Justin’s branch of the family is straighter than that. They are great grandsons of the golf pro who several generations of family members recall fondly as Pepe.Mock grew up watching his father play in the Keane with his grandfather – Tommy’s son-in-law. After his grandfather passed away, his father Peter Mock teamed up with Justin.
“Then when my dad passed away about five years ago my brother asked me to play,” said Mock, whose experience in golf had been pretty much limited to the kind with windmills and clowns. “We play with our cousins, the Whitmans (Lars and Marc). Being the newest to the game but the oldest they take me under their wing and give me encouragement, which just really strengthens those family bonds.”
Those bonds trace back to Tommy, the son of Irish immigrants who grew up in Arlington, Mass., who once caddied for famed golfer Francis Ouimet, and as Dartmouth pro played a round with President Dwight Eisenhower.
Brian Atchinson won’t be on the course or trading good-natured barbs with relatives on the Hanover Country Club porch this weekend but, pardon the pun, he will have a Keane interest in the goings on. As a boy growing up near Springfield, Mass., he spent every summer from age 8 to 16 to living with his grandparents, bunking in a room attached to the barn at their house in West Lebanon.
Like his cousins, the suburban Washington, D.C. attorney spent a lot of time caddying and shagging balls at Tommy Keane’s lessons. He understood at a young age that his Pepe was someone special, and thinks the tournament that carries his name is a fitting way to honor him.
“It is tremendously gratifying that my grandfather’s legacy lives on this way,” Atchinson said. “He touched and inspired a lot of people. My middle name is Keane and I am extremely proud of that legacy.”
Vying for the long-distance award this weekend is Kevin Keane, a New Hampshire native now living in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
“It is an event I have looked forward to every year since I was probably 5- or 6-years-old,” said the ski coach/kayak instructor who is a brother, son, grandson and great-grandson of men named Tommy Keane. “We always went to it as kids growing up and would run around the course or hunt balls. I have missed it the last two years I think, so I decided with it being the 40th anniversary I couldn’t pass it up.
“It’s about a lot of guys who have known each other for many years,” he added. “It’s nice to get together with everybody around the same time of year for the same reason. They love the game of golf but more importantly, they love hanging out together. The tournament is almost it’s own family.”
Jim Keane, Kevin’s uncle and one of Tommy’s grandsons if you happen to be keeping score, feels the same way about a weekend when everyone who plays is, at the very least, an honorary Keane.
“It’s like a big family reunion,” he said. “You see a lot of the same people, year after year. Not just our family but people like Fred Kelley and Seaver Peters, who have been very involved right from the beginning of the tournament, and who played golf all the time with my grandfather.
“The tournament and our family have really appreciated their help and the support the College, Hanover Country Club, and its staff have given us. Everybody really looks forward to it, but without the College and the club members accommodating us it wouldn’t be possible.”
FRIDAY QUALIFYING
Castletown State standout Zach Temple and former Hartford High School teammate Mak Lyford were medalists Friday, carding seven birdies and an eagle on 15 to post a 6-under 65.
The father-son team of Shane and Nick MacDonald of Lebanon posted a 66 in defense of the title they won last year, while Hartford products Jake Obar and Billy Vielleux were next at 67.
A logjam at 71 sent six teams back to the 18th tee to play for the final spot in the 16-team championship flight. A couple of tee balls in the gully dropped Don Weisberger and Mike Kelley out of the championship flight, but it hardly put a damper on the day for Kelley, who had a hole-in-one on No. 14.
Play continues all day Saturday with the teams that advance playing the semifinals and finals in four flights Sunday.
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