Round not finished, but some stories are
QUINCY - Steady rain kept half the field at Granite Links Golf Club from finishing yesterday's BJ's Charity Classic, and how better to let the rain pass by telling a few golf stories.
Here's one: Tied atop the leaderboard, Laura Shanahan Rowe had just picked up a birdie on 17, helping her and partner Barb Whitehead keep pace with the pack. Feeling the adrenaline rush, she took a strong line on 18, wanting to make the green on the 490-yard par 5 in two.
But she pulled it into the hay on the right side.
"It's really tough stuff, so I was forced to chip it back into the fairway," said Shanahan Rowe, a native of Bedford, N.H., and instructor at Canterbury Woods. "I decided to go with a 3-wood to get it up there."
Her shot sailed uphill toward the green. A tournament staffer, receiving word of the birdie on 17, had just moved the "Shanahan Rowe/Whitehead" card to the top of the leaderboard.
The shot headed for the board.
Clank.
The ball nearly knocked the card to the ground and scattered the gallery on 18. Shanahan Rowe saved par by chipping in from beneath the scoreboard.
"It was right out of 'Tin Cup' or something," she said. "Golf is a strange game. It can take it away from you as fast as it gives it to you."
Whitehead and Shanahan Rowe, Jenny Lidback and Cindy Miller, and Cindy Schreyer and Tina Tombs all finished with 67s to top the board.
Yesterday, the horn sounded after 14 of the 28 teams had finished the round. To be sure, a field that includes legends like Pat Bradley, Nancy Lopez, Val Skinner, Patty Sheehan, and Beth Daniel has seen this sort of thing before.
"I thought we had retired from rain delays," laughed Lopez, who had a 6-under-par round going with partner Skinner.
When they resume today morning at 8 (everyone will be re-seeded and play the final round at 10:15), Tombs will be as excited as anyone. Tombs is making her Legends Tour debut and a happy return to the competitive golf.
"I can't remember the last time I played in a tournament," said Tombs, whose last LPGA event was in 2001.
It's not like Tombs's passion waned. The former pro, who was born in Montreal and grew up Bedford, N.H., teaches golf in Phoenix at the Biltmore Hotel and her TV show, "Tina Tombs' Golf Lessons," is set to air in the next few weeks on Phoenix-area cable stations. But when Tombs beams and tells you it's good to be back playing, she means it.
She was a New Hampshire junior champion and played at Arizona State on scholarship. She got her LPGA card in 1988 and won the 1990 Jamie Farr Toledo Classic. But in the decade after, she kept missing cuts. Tombs suffers from epilepsy, and was forced to retire because it affected her game.
"I struggled with my health and I went through raising kids and I just decided that I had to get away from it," said Tombs, who just turned 46. "I love golf, and love competition. I had to really find myself again, because I didn't know what do without it."
Though her teaching career is taking off, Tombs missed the adrenaline rush of playing. So when the Legends Tour gave her a call, she jumped at the chance to come back to New England.
"Everyone was supportive and happy," she said. "My family's here, they're all watching. It should be fun tomorrow. It's fun just to be here."
Skinner, who has a 3-foot birdie putt on 13 when play resumes, lauded the tournament, which has raised $3.6 million for charity in three years. "Especially having the Hall of Fame members here, to watch how much game they have left," she said.
"And to have all the veterans here, who really built the game. It makes for a good, fun weekend of golf."
